Marcia Bonta

  • Superflight

    It began with red-breasted nuthatches. In early August 2012, one of the largest irruptions of this northern species in living memory started with reports from counties in eastern Pennsylvania. By the end of November unprecedented numbers were recorded in all 67 counties in the state. In late September the first purple finches arrived in Pennsylvania…

  • Mindful Creatures

    Scientists interested in cognitive ethology have begun to study learning in vertebrate and invertebrate animals, bolstered by the work of neurobiologists, who have discovered that any animal with loops between thalamus and forebrain is a conscious thinker. Birds, mammals, and reptiles all have such loops.

  • Putting Up the Feeders

    I only put the feeders out as early as November because I am a veteran Project FeederWatch participant, having signed on for this citizen science project, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the first year it was offered. Last fall was its and my 26th season, and it began on November 10.

  • Vulture Days

    Last September once again I missed International Vulture Awareness Day. That was on September 7 and my husband Bruce and I were celebrating our fiftieth wedding anniversary in the province of Quebec. Specifically, we were sitting six feet away from the largest common gannet colony in the Western hemisphere, watching them fighting, mating, tending young,…

  • Eastern Wood-Pewees

    During warm August days most songbirds are quiet. They are molting and stay hidden from potential enemies. But the eastern wood-pewee drawls his plaintive “pee-ah-wee” song. He, it turns out, doesn’t molt until after he migrates. Without his songs, our August forest would be almost silent.

  • Valentine Eagle

    Trail cam photos of the golden eagle at the spruce grove bait pile (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through to view the slideshow) “Can you identify this bird?” The question came to me via email last Valentine’s Day from our caretaker wife, Paula Scott. Accompanying her email was a photo from one…

  • Christmas books for nature-lovers

    Christmas is coming and even in this super-technological world, some of us still like to curl up with a good book. If you are such a person or if someone like that is on your Christmas list, you might be interested in one of the following books. Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing…

  • The Longest Autumn

    Every autumn the first hard frost comes later. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, when we were engaged in intensive gardening, we could expect a hard frost in the first week of October. Gradually, as the years passed, the hard frost date arrived in the second week. Then, in this century, it moved into…

  • White-Crowned Sparrows

    The white-crowned sparrows must be wondering about our strange weather. Last October, near the end of their fall migration, they were met here by a heavy snowstorm. For the first time I can remember, we even had a white-crown at our feeder area from October 31 through November 2. Usually, I see them during their…

  • Louisiana Waterthrush

    Sometime in early April, I hear the ringing song of a Louisiana waterthrush near our Plummer’s Hollow stream. One of the first neotropical migrant birds to return, he comes winging in from as far south as northern South America and southern Cuba. This handsome brown warbler, his whitish breast streaked with brown, looks more like…

  • Return of the Bald Eagles

    Eight inches of fresh snow covered Sinking Valley. It was early in February 2011 and our son, Steve, and I were conducting our annual Winter Raptor Survey while my husband, Bruce, drove the car. I had been participating in the survey every winter since Greg Grove first started this statewide count back in 2001. When…

  • Ghost Bird

    It’s a cold, crisp morning in early November. Robins call and sing in the sunlit treetops at the edge of First Field. As I head down our woodland road, first one and then a second common raven flies low and “bonks.” Above Waterthrush Bench I hear the continual ticking of songbirds near or in a…