Marcia Bonta

  • Owls of North America and the Caribbean, by Scott Weidensaul

    If you like owls as much as I do, then the Peterson Reference Guide to Owls of North America and the Caribbean is the book for you.  Filled with gorgeous, glossy photographs of owls, this book also serves as an excellent reference source. Neither as folksy and readable as the Bent series on birds nor…

  • Coyote America, by Dan Flores

    Here is a review of the book Coyote America which I wrote for the November/December 2016 issue of The Gnatcatcher, published by the Juniata Valley Audubon Society: If you, like me, are a fan of coyotes, this book will both delight and sicken you.  Subtitled A Natural and Supernatural History, Flores covers every aspect of…

  • Two Book Reviews

    I’ve decided to start periodically putting up book reviews I’ve been writing for our Juniata Valley Audubon Society’s The Gnatcatcher in the belief that reading books with a nature theme is important for those of us who love the natural world. Here is the one from the November/December 2015 issue: Recently I’ve read two novels…

  • Living with Bears

    Over the years I have had numerous close encounters with black bears, and not once have I felt threatened. That is as it should be according to black bear researcher Benjamin Kilham. He has been studying black bears in the field and raising orphaned cubs at the behest of the New Hampshire Fish and Game…

  • 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 Unexpected and Expected

    It’s the tenth of August, and I can barely believe my ears. A wood thrush is singing two weeks later than I’ve ever heard one before. Such a wonderful, unexpected gift so late in the season when most birdsong has been replaced by the buzzing and chirping of crickets and grasshoppers. But then it is…

  • Lives of Woodland Snails

    Imagine having the time to watch the life of a woodland snail.  That’s what happened to Elizabeth Tova Bailey when she was felled by a mysterious neurological illness that put her flat on her back.  She could not move without pain, and so she was tended by a caregiver in a studio apartment. Then, one…

  • A second life for “Escape to the Mountain”

    Never ignore your junk mail. That’s a lesson I learned a year ago last July when I found an e-mail in my junk mail folder from an agent in New York City. She was representing a small press in Virginia — Axios Press — that was interested in reprinting my first book, Escape to the…

  • Last Children in the Woods?

    “I’m not afraid of snakes any more,” six-year-old Morgan declared. After spending a rainy day indoors with adults glued to computers and/or movies, she was ready to go outside. Remembering previous visits when I had taken her on walks, she knew that I was the adult she needed to impress. And I was impressed. She…

  • New sales figures, slideshow

    A new, retrospective catalog from Penn State Press, prepared to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary, lists Outbound Journeys in Pennsylvania as its bestseller in the Keystone Books imprint, with over 10,000 copies sold since its publication in 1987. The sequel, More Outbound Journeys in Pennsylvania, hasn’t sold as well — only 3000+ — probably because people…

  • Jeremiad

    In honor of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change‘s dire predictions, I found the following in Peter Matthiessen’s End of the Earth, published in 2003: I seek to understand phenomena that might help our self-destroying species to appreciate the shimmering web of biodiversity in the Earth process, the common miracles, fleeting as ocean birds, which…

  • Sy Montgomery books for kids

    I have read all three of the books by Sy Montgomery in the Houghton Mifflin “Scientists in the Field” series for kids in the 9 to 12 range. They are excellent. All have wonderful photos by Nic Bishop that accompany a fascinating text. The Snake Scientist discusses the thousands of red-sided garter snakes that hibernate…