Marcia Bonta

  • Snowbirds

    It was a fine early December day — 18 degrees with partial sunshine and a howling wind.  A new half-inch of snow covered the ground.  I counted the birds at my feeders because it was a Project FeederWatch day.  For over 20 years, two days a week from November until early April, I’ve been counting…

  • In Search of Silence

    Ever since I read about Gordon Hempton’s One Square Inch of Silence project, I’ve been more keenly aware of our noisy world.  Hempton, a sound ecologist, has been recording natural sounds for decades.  Nicknamed Sound Tracker for his recordings, he laments that every decade our world becomes noisier.  While city dwellers are acutely conscious of…