Marcia Bonta

  • Theodora Cope Gray – Nature’s Own Child

    She died as she had wished, propped up in her bed so she could watch the birds at her feeder. At 94 years of age, Teddy Gray had lived a long and interesting life. She would say that her happiest days were those spent when she was married to Philip Gray whom she wed when…

  • 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…

  • The Delaware Connection

    To save a stream valley shared by two states seems an impossible dream, especially when the states are in the thickly populated eastern corridor. But that’s exactly what Pennsylvania and Delaware did. On the Pennsylvania side, in southeastern Chester County, the 1,253-acre White Clay Creek Preserve is the only preserve in the Pennsylvania state park…

  • Under the Spruce Grove

    Twenty-five years ago my husband Bruce and I planted 2000 Norway spruce seedlings at the top of First Field and 2000 red pine seedlings at the Far Field. The seedlings were courtesy of the Westvaco paper mill in Tyrone. The tree planter, which we hitched to our secondhand, Massey-Ferguson tractor, had been borrowed from the…

  • Visiting Old Growth

    Sometimes you have to work to see an old growth forest. That’s what my husband Bruce, our son Dave, and I decided as we labored up the steep, rocky, north side of Paddy Mountain one summer day. We were following the unmarked Joyce Kilmer Trail through the Joyce Kilmer Natural Area in Bald Eagle State…

  • Continental Habitat Islands

    Bob Gruver held the small snake by the back of its head as we gathered around to look. The owner of the shale barren we were exploring, John Cantrell, was aghast. “That’s a copperhead,” he said. “No, no,” Gruver answered. “Look at the turned-up snout. This is a young hognose snake.” The rest of us…

  • Minstrel of the Woods

    I don’t have to leave this planet to hear the music of the spheres. Surely, listening to wood thrushes singing is as ethereal an experience as any mortal can hope for on earth. Many evenings, when I step outside, wood thrush song envelops me and it seems as if all the world’s wood thrushes are…

  • Latham’s Acre

    Land Manager John Dzemyan is a man with a mission. He wants every hunter in Pennsylvania to see his 150 deer exclosures on state gamelands in McKean and Elk counties. Only then will they understand the terrific damage an overabundant deer herd does to the forest, a forest that sustains not only deer but bear,…

  • Saving Riparian Forests

    Our Plummer’s Hollow stream is a faint, unnamed blue line on Highbee’s stream map of Pennsylvania. Although it is only a mile and a half long and its streambed is less than ten feet wide, it greatly influences the streamside or riparian forest through which it flows. The riparian forest, in turn, is essential to…

  • Middle Creek Midwinter

    Two miles from Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, the sky suddenly filled up with skeins of greater snow geese. It was mid-February, just after a rainstorm, and my husband Bruce, my father and I had come to see the amazing spectacle of greater snow geese (Anser caerulescens atlantica) on State Game Lands 46 in Lancaster…

  • Arizona’s Passenger Pigeon

    Habitat loss is affecting wildlife populations worldwide. Although the loss of forests has received the most attention, the loss of native grasslands is even more devastating. Scientists estimate that 99% of our native prairie is gone. Here in Pennsylvania grassland bird populations have declined significantly in the southeast and south central parts of the state…