Marcia Bonta

  • 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…

  • 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 Such a wonderful, unexpected gift so late in the season when most birdsong has been replaced by the buzzing and chirping of crickets and grasshoppers.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…

  • Wildflowers of a June Forest

    Now that the flush of forest spring wildflowers has passed, it’s easy to overlook most of the late bloomers.  Yet our June woods produce some lovely native wildflowers, beginning with the pink lady’s-slipper. Although it starts to bloom in mid-May, it holds its single crimson-pink slipper for three weeks.  The pink lady’s-slipper orchid (Cypripedium acaule)…

  • Talus Slope Life

    Late in March, I ease my way down to the talus slope in an attempt to escape female ticks eager for blood to nourish their eggs. I’ve never been surefooted, so, clutching my walking stick, I only go far enough out on the rocks to escape the bloodsuckers. Luckily, the March wind is blowing, which…

  • The Beautiful Beech

    Ghostly leaves of American beech trees sway in February storms like tiny spirits alive in a frozen world.  But only small and medium-sized beech trees hold on to their leaves throughout the winter. In the fall, I watch the toothed, leathery, single beech leaves turn from green to gold.  Then the gold leaks from them…

  • Snowy Christmas Bird Count

    All over Pennsylvania, Christmas Bird Counts were being postponed or cancelled because of the weather. But the date, I thought, was set in stone.  We had to go ahead despite the snow. After all, participants in Alaska and northern Canada usually counted birds when the weather was challenging.  That’s what I told my son, Steve,…

  • October snow

    “Nanna, it’s snowing!” My first thought was, no, it can’t be.  It’s only the fifteenth of October.  We’ve never had snow this early. Why, last year our first frost was October 19. Surely it won’t last, this spring onion snow in October. Big, fat flakes fell and Elanor, our four-year-old granddaughter, and her Uncle Dave…

  • Woolly Bears and Tiger Moths

    What child is not intrigued by woolly bear caterpillars?  Our little granddaughter, Elanor, certainly is.  Last September she gathered up a handful of the bristly creatures as they paraded across our veranda and claimed them as pets.  I tried to discourage her, but she was adamant, and her father, Steve, who is an amateur entomologist…

  • “Her Management is Beauty”: In Defense of Unmowed Lawns

    It’s mid-August, and I’m driving across the valley through walls of corn.  Occasional fields are mowed clean for the second time.  The only habitat left was along the roads, and the township mowers have cut that as well.  I wonder what happened to the eastern meadowlarks I heard singing in the spring, or why the…

  • The Mushroom Man

    “I was trained by the gypsies,” Bill Russell told me.  “They would come to set up camps near my home in Turtle Creek, southeast of Pittsburgh, for six weeks every summer.” The gypsies may have added to his growing knowledge, but Russell caught mushroom fever while hunting field mushrooms with his parents when he was…

  • Nature’s Garbage Collectors

    Like residents of Hinckley, Ohio, who always welcome the first turkey vultures back on March 15, I too await the return of them in March and regard them as one of the first signs of spring.  Usually the day they appear here is windy, and they rock back and forth above First Field, their wings…