Marcia Bonta

  • Where Have All The Birds Gone?

    Where Have All The Birds Gone? ornithologist John Terborgh asked in his book back in 1989. I was reminded of his question early last October when I noticed that the migrants were few and far between and the woods strangely silent. Then the National Audubon Society released its State of the Birds USA 2004 report.…

  • A Natural Heritage

    “I’m too old for this,” I think as I follow Jessica McPherson up and down the steep banks of Bob’s Creek on State Game Lands 26. I am also severely sleep-deprived and only sheer adrenalin keeps me going. But I am determined to keep up with McPherson, a woman four decades younger than me and…

  • Another Batty August

    On a warm August evening, my husband Bruce and I sat in our living room, reading quietly. Suddenly, we were not alone. A bat, flying close to our heads, circled the room. Bruce called our son Dave up from the guesthouse to help shepherd the bat outside through the open front door, but it wouldn’t…

  • Turtle Woods Wildflower Sanctuary, Part 2

    Four years have passed since we built our three-acre deer exclosure, and already the changes are noticeable. Tree seedlings have sprouted and grown, and new wildflower species have appeared. Slowly the deer browse line has softened and filled in. We chose to put the exclosure in a mature patch of deciduous forest so the changes…

  • The Biodiversity of Lake Pleasant

    On a bright, breezy day in early June we paddled a canoe around Lake Pleasant, one of eight glacial lakes in northwestern Pennsylvania.  Despite its prosaic name, the 64-acre lake in eastern Erie County has more natural diversity along its shoreline, in its surrounding wetlands, and in the lake itself than any other lake in…

  • Firefly Magic

    Warm July nights are lit by a sea of blinking firefly lights. To my undiscriminating eye, the flashes seem to be random. But scientists studying fireflies are able to tell most species apart by the pattern, rhythm, and color of firefly flashes. That is also the way fireflies themselves identify their own species. Such knowledge…

  • Down the Allegheny

    A spectacular first day of June and my husband Bruce and I are heading down the river with the “Admiral of the Allegheny.”  Dick Krear likes the honorary title and deserves it.  As an unpaid River Keeper, he keeps a vigilant eye on human activities along the Allegheny from Franklin to Foxburg. He has also…

  • Saving Box Turtles

    Imagine digging a trench for a box turtle enclosure in one hundred degree heat! That’s what an army of volunteers did back in July 1999 at the Buttermilk Hill Nature Sanctuary in northwestern Pennsylvania. “It took an hour to dig a yard,” Dr. William Belzer of Clarion University told my husband Bruce and me when…

  • Fool’s Errand

    Perhaps it was the memory of a rainy April day at the Brucker Great Blue Heron Sanctuary of Thiel College, or perhaps it was my admiration for these elegant waterbirds and the chance to see them once again going about their familial tasks. Whatever the reason, I had volunteered to participate in a statewide survey…

  • Living in the Appalachian Forest

    If you have aliens on your property, March is the month to take inventory. That’s because many of the most damaging ones leaf out way ahead of native plants. Scientists call the worst of these plants “invasives.” And invade they do, especially over on the former property of our logger-neighbor. Back in 1991, before we…

  • Queen of the Fritillaries

    We needed military clearance to get in, but it was worth it. In a field of native little bluestem grasses, tucked between two ridges, several mature field thistles supported dozens of nectaring regal fritillary butterflies. Most were the larger, brighter, black and deep orange-colored females although we did spot a few dull-colored, worn-out males, 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…