Marcia Bonta

  • Golden Eagle Redux

    In case you’ve been wondering about the photo of me in the sidebar, here’s the story, from my November column in Pennsylvania Game News. The phone rang just as we were in the midst of eating dinner. “I’ll bet that’s Trish and she’s got an eagle,” I said. Bruce answered the phone. “You’ve got an…

  • Mountain Meadows

    Imagine receiving a gift of 113 acres on Tussey Mountain.  That’s what happened to Mike and Laura Jackson back in 1988 when Laura’s parents, Richard and Phyllis Hershberger, gave them a portion of their farm.  The Jacksons named their property Mountain Meadows and built a home with large windows for wildlife viewing. Part of the…

  • In Search of Nature

    “It’s too darned hot,” I said on our 45th wedding anniversary. The temperature was heading into the high, humid nineties so we shelved our plan to take a hike. Instead, we followed Plan B and on a late August morning, my husband Bruce and I drove to the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art in…

  • Sunday, Sweet Sunday

    Sunday is my favorite day of the week.  That’s because traffic is light on Interstate 99 at the base of our mountain on the Logan Valley side and the industrial-sized limestone quarry on the Sinking Valley side is closed for the day.  Other businesses are also quiet, and I revel in the peace of “Sunday,…

  • Making Connections

    Our plane dropped through the momentary hole in the clouds and made a perfect landing on the St. John’s runway. After a day’s delay, because of fog, we had finally arrived in Newfoundland. Place of my dreams, this island in the sea is halfway to Ireland. And yet here is where our beloved Appalachian Mountains…

  • Unexpected Encounters

    To encounter the unexpected is why I go out day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, walking the same mountain trails. But I rarely have a Discovery Channel moment. At most, I might find a new wildflower, an unusual butterfly, or a rare bird. Still, I’ve had my moments.…

  • Sparrow April

    Last April was the coldest on record. Birds that should have left stayed, and those that had returned during the warmer March days endured. At our bird feeding area, we hosted nine New World sparrow species. Migrants, winter visitors, and permanent residents by the dozen mingled on the ground, the back steps, and porch, eating…

  • The Best and Worst of Times

    February can be the best and worst of times. Last winter we had more best than worst. Many days were cold, crisp, and bright. Those that weren’t dumped enough snow for my snowshoeing pleasure. Unusual bird sightings and close-ups of several mammals added to my appreciation of this shortest month of the year. In addition,…

  • American Robin

    Eat and Be Merry 2, by Today is a good day (Creative Commons) Note: Though most of the other posts on this site are reprints of my columns in the Pennsylvania Game News, I wrote this one for Birdwatcher’s Digest, where it was the cover story for the January-February 2008 issue. American robins remind me…

  • Flying Monkeys

    Crows acting up, by Greg7 “Why don’t you just shoot them?” That’s the reaction of most homeowners when Grant Stokke asks permission to live trap American crows in their backyards. But he hastens to add that they do give him permission. Stokke is a graduate student who is working with Dr. Margaret Brittingham, professor of…

  • Golden Eagle Days (Part 2)

    Continued from November. photo by Todd Katzner Then came the great change. After a mild, misty start on December first, the thermometer hit 65 degrees and then began to plummet as the wind picked up. The northwest winds had finally arrived a month late and with it, the following morning, came the eagle researchers. They…

  • Golden Eagle Days (Part 1)

    “I think that the Bald Eagle Ridge is the single best place in Pennsylvania to observe golden eagles,” Mike Lanzone told us. He was talking about our mountain, which is the westernmost ridge in Pennsylvania’s ridge and valley province. Lanzone is the Assistant Field Ornithology Projects Coordinator for the Powdermill Avian Research Center. He, along…