Marcia Bonta

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Turtle Woods Wildflower Sanctuary

    I never should have taken my husband Bruce to see Latham’s Acre. Located at State Game Lands 30 on Dividing Ridge in southeastern McKean County, it was like stepping into a lost world, one that had been fenced to keep out deer back in 1949 by Roger Latham and Stan Forbes of the Pennsylvania Game…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • Walking the Lines

    “Good fences make good neighbors,” Robert Frost once wrote. So do good surveys. After procrastinating for years, we bit the financial bullet and hired a surveyor to survey our square mile of mountain land. The surveyor was the same one who had surveyed a portion of our property years ago when we had bought some…

  • 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…

  • Passing the Torch

    Four-year-old Eva came to us last spring for a five week visit after almost a year in Honduras. “She’s forgotten most of her English,” her father Mark warned. He had continued to speak English to her, but her mother Luz and grandmother Clara, who were also visiting, conversed with her in rapid-fire Spanish. How could…