Marcia Bonta

  • Marooned

    Last January was a dream of a winter. By the middle of the month we had a foot of standing snow and I was out every bright, sunny day on my snowshoes. Birds and animals flocked to our feeders–32 American tree sparrows, 62 mourning doves, 40 dark-eyed juncos–along with a button buck, two cottontail rabbits,…

  • Little Loggers

    Last winter I spent more time watching meadow voles beneath our feeders than I did birds. The heavy snowfall in early December provided perfect cover for them and when most of it melted later in the month, the voles’ runways were easy to see. Several voles had nests near our feeders and often their dark…

  • Hurricane Isabel

    A dire weather report put us on alert.  Hurricane Isabel was headed in our direction after cutting a wide swath of destruction through North Carolina and Virginia. Memories of Hurricane Agnes, which struck here during our first year on the mountain, made me apprehensive.  In June of 1972, days of rain preceding the hurricane had…

  • An Irish Spring

    “I wake and hear it raining.” So begins Mark Van Doren’s wonderful poem “Morning Worship” and so began many of my mornings last spring. Van Doren goes on to list the wonders of the natural world he would miss were he dead, praising all the “sweet beings” that he knows will outlive him–mountains, huge trees,…

  • Cooper’s Hawk Redux

    Back in mid-March 2002, our hopes were high.  Our son Dave reported the loud “cak-cak-cak” dawn calling of a pair of Cooper’s hawks in the woods above the guesthouse.  Day after day despite cold, misty rain, and even a snowstorm, the couple continued vocalizing.  Near the end of the month they started refurbishing an old…

  • Shrew Business

    In the gray, gathering gloom of an imminent February snowstorm, I stopped to watch a northern short-tailed shrew foraging on the edge of our powerline right-of-way. On this day it was a breezy 22 degrees Fahrenheit and patches of bare earth alternated with patches of frozen snow. The shrew had scuttled past a mere five…

  • Waxwing Winter

    On a catch-your-breath cold morning in mid-January, I walked for a mile in silence. Only when I reached Coyote Bench did the forest come alive with music and color. A flock of cedar waxwings, whistling while they worked, harvested wild grapes from vines directly above my head. They look like perfect ladies and gentlemen in…

  • Tinkerbells of the Bird World

    Day after day in late May, an unfamiliar bird song that I heard as I walked through our Norway spruce grove haunted me. Then, on May 30, I finally identified the singers. Golden-crowned kinglets! And the female had nesting materials in her beak. Bold and cheerful as chickadees, golden-crowned kinglets are smaller, more elfin and…

  • A Walking Meditation

    Another National Migratory Bird Count day and we are blessed by a perfect May morning–cool, clear, and ringing with birdsong. This time, though, I resolve to take it easy, to move slowly and quietly, to make this day a walking meditation on the beauties of this most splendid of months. Besides, I am getting older…

  • A Red-breasted Winter

    Last winter we had our first ever red-breasted nuthatch at our bird feeders. The little mite zipped in and out from late November until late April, keeping his own company in as singular a fashion as our lone wintering song sparrow. Was I merely dazzled by his rareness here to think him more attractive than…

  • Alan’s Bench

    We have a new bench on our property–a memorial bench–built to honor one of our youngest hunters. Seventeen-year-old Alan Harshberger died in a pickup truck collision, through no fault of his, on Memorial Day weekend 2000. The bench was built by Tim Tyler, a hunter friend of ours who is a close friend of the…

  • Visitor from the Taiga

    The church bells began ringing at twelve noon and continued for ten minutes. It was the National Day of Prayer–September 14, 2001. Everyone was focused on the death and destruction of September 11, praying both for the victims and the survivors, and looking for a ray of hope in that dark time. To find that…