Marcia Bonta

  • A Walking Meditation

    Another National Migratory Bird Count day and we are blessed by a perfect May morning–cool, clear, and ringing with birdsong. This time, though, I resolve to take it easy, to move slowly and quietly, to make this day a walking meditation on the beauties of this most splendid of months. Besides, I am getting older…

  • Fool’s Errand

    Perhaps it was the memory of a rainy April day at the Brucker Great Blue Heron Sanctuary of Thiel College, or perhaps it was my admiration for these elegant waterbirds and the chance to see them once again going about their familial tasks. Whatever the reason, I had volunteered to participate in a statewide survey…

  • Looking for Winter Raptors

    As citizen scientists become more numerous in the birding world, there is no end to the monitoring projects we can engage in. Take the WRS, for example, which stands for the Winter Raptor Survey. The brainchild of birder Greg Grove, it seems like the easiest of exercises–driving around a specific area in the middle of…

  • 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…

  • Alan’s Bench

    We have a new bench on our property–a memorial bench–built to honor one of our youngest hunters. Seventeen-year-old Alan Harshberger died in a pickup truck collision, through no fault of his, on Memorial Day weekend 2000. The bench was built by Tim Tyler, a hunter friend of ours who is a close friend of the…

  • Visitor from the Taiga

    The church bells began ringing at twelve noon and continued for ten minutes. It was the National Day of Prayer–September 14, 2001. Everyone was focused on the death and destruction of September 11, praying both for the victims and the survivors, and looking for a ray of hope in that dark time. To find that…

  • Mobbed by Birds

    Last year I was mobbed eleven times. I was always minding my own business as I walked quietly along our woodland trails, but nesting birds didn’t see it that way. To them I was a predator, and they wanted me to move on. Birds or other animals mob by harassing a common enemy such as…

  • An Aural April

    On a misty morning in early April, I set out on a listening walk. The fog was so thick I could barely make out the trail in front of me. But although my visibility was almost zero, my hearing was excellent. First I stood in our yard and listened to the assorted whistles of a…

  • Great Backyard Bird Count

    It’s mid-February and once again I’m counting birds for science. When I first heard about the Great Backyard Bird Count, I was enthusiastic. Instead of only one day, like the Christmas Bird Count and National Migratory Bird Day, I had four days. And it took place during the psychologically longest winter month, even though numerically…

  • Watching Winter Predators

    During winter, we are all in it together–the birds and animals that choose to tough out the season here, and my husband Bruce, our son Dave, and me. Wild creatures and humans alike must have enough food to stay alive and healthy and adequate shelter from cold and wind. For us humans it is relatively…

  • 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…

  • A Seedy Month

    What a wealth of wildlife food our forest produces in October. Probably our most important crop is acorns from our many mature oak trees. Early in the month, long before acorns fall off the trees, blue jays come from far and wide to pick them, their calls resounding through the forest as they shell and…