Marcia Bonta

  • Cooper’s Hawk Redux

    Back in mid-March 2002, our hopes were high.  Our son Dave reported the loud “cak-cak-cak” dawn calling of a pair of Cooper’s hawks in the woods above the guesthouse.  Day after day despite cold, misty rain, and even a snowstorm, the couple continued vocalizing.  Near the end of the month they started refurbishing an old…

  • Shrew Business

    In the gray, gathering gloom of an imminent February snowstorm, I stopped to watch a northern short-tailed shrew foraging on the edge of our powerline right-of-way. On this day it was a breezy 22 degrees Fahrenheit and patches of bare earth alternated with patches of frozen snow. The shrew had scuttled past a mere five…

  • Waxwing Winter

    On a catch-your-breath cold morning in mid-January, I walked for a mile in silence. Only when I reached Coyote Bench did the forest come alive with music and color. A flock of cedar waxwings, whistling while they worked, harvested wild grapes from vines directly above my head. They look like perfect ladies and gentlemen in…

  • Nature’s Ultimate Bankers

    It’s late January as I crunch over frosty, fallen leaves on my way to Coyote Bench. Almost immediately I hear the high-pitched whine of a female gray squirrel in a mating chase. Four male squirrels are after her, but one male fends off the others. Once the female turns and faces him at the end…

  • A Red-breasted Winter

    Last winter we had our first ever red-breasted nuthatch at our bird feeders. The little mite zipped in and out from late November until late April, keeping his own company in as singular a fashion as our lone wintering song sparrow. Was I merely dazzled by his rareness here to think him more attractive than…

  • Coyote Birthday

    Two summers ago I reached one of those milestone birthdays that I didn’t want to think about. “Don’t bother celebrating my birthday,” I told my family. “But Mom,” our son Dave protested, “I’m going to give you coyotes for your birthday.” I was skeptical that he could do so even though our adventure with coyotes…

  • Courting Coons, Etc.

    If I had another life to live, I would be a mammalogist. But instead of going to Africa to study the behavior of animals such as elephants or chimpanzees, I would specialize in some of eastern North America’s most common mammals. Countless books have been written about tigers and lions, elephants and chimpanzees, but few,…

  • Christmas Bird

    He comes into our feeding grounds early on Christmas Day. Resplendent against the snow, he glows like a Christmas light. What is he doing here, among his drably suited brethren? Why isn’t he in the tropics with the other gaudily attired birds? Once the northern cardinal was a southern bird. John James Audubon knew it…

  • Summer’s Fiddlers

    He stalked through the grasses, ears cupped, head down. Then he squatted, still listening and looking. Steve Rannels was pursuing crickets and katydids behind the Middle Creek Management Area’s Visitors Center. My husband Bruce and I had been fascinated by the compact disc Rannels, Wil Hershberger and Joseph Dillon had recently released entitled “Songs of…

  • Return of the Whip-poor-wills

    I remember 1976 and 1977 as whip-poor-will years. That was when a whip-poor-will adopted our home grounds as part of his territory, singing at dusk and dawn on our driveway and around both the guesthouse and main house. Several times our eldest son, Steve, and I sneaked down for a glimpse of him, but all…

  • The Feeders at Night

    Every fall, in early November, I hang two bird feeders from our back porch latticework. One is an open, wooden platform feeder that has been batted apart at least three times by black bears and patiently repaired by my husband Bruce. That feeder is now almost 34 years old and has great sentimental value to…

  • Minstrel of the Woods

    I don’t have to leave this planet to hear the music of the spheres. Surely, listening to wood thrushes singing is as ethereal an experience as any mortal can hope for on earth. Many evenings, when I step outside, wood thrush song envelops me and it seems as if all the world’s wood thrushes are…