Marcia Bonta

  • A Pandemic Year

    A Pandemic Year

    December is my least favorite month. I used to call it the “freezing rain” month. But lately it has been giving me more varied weather from warm and sunny to cold rain, freezing rain, and snow. Since I write my columns four months ahead of time, I’m writing this one during the extreme drought and…

  • Stony Garden

    Researchers puzzled over why only the boulder fields in a thin line from northern Bucks County to nearby Montgomery County outside of Pottstown ring with melodious tones. Current thinking is that they ring because of the density of the rocks and the high degree of internal stress that occurred when the molten rock came close…

  • Elk Country Outing

    Elk Country Outing

    As soon as we saw a sign telling us we were in Elk Country, five pairs of eyes scanned the landscape for a glimpse of the elusive elk.

  • The 114th Christmas Bird Count

    The annual Christmas Bird Count is livened up by some extra counters, but inclement weather makes for a very challenging count.

  • Cavity-Nesting Birds

    I’ve never thought of myself as a female Dr. Doolittle, but last June a bird “talked” to me and I understood her.

  • Surprise Visitor

    Sometimes we have unexpected visitors to our mountain dooryard. Last December 6, shortly after lunch, my husband, Bruce, stepped outside on our veranda. That was when a mink bounded past almost at his feet and down into the lilac shrubs next to the house. “I think I just saw a mink,” Bruce shouted to me…

  • Putting Up the Feeders

    I only put the feeders out as early as November because I am a veteran Project FeederWatch participant, having signed on for this citizen science project, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the first year it was offered. Last fall was its and my 26th season, and it began on November 10.

  • Chickarees

    Having moved from Maine, where we had lived in the country for five years and hiked in our mixed conifer woods filled with scolding red squirrels, I had no idea that central Pennsylvania had marginal habitat for them. But over our 41 years here, after the two attic squirrels were eliminated, I had had only…

  • Visit from a Hairy-tailed Mole

    Here’s the video our son Dave made of our hairy-tailed mole. Listen for a cardinal cheering, the calls of eastern wood-pewees and eastern towhees, train whistles, and a loud plane going over as well as vehicles from the interstate as background sounds. On a cool, clear morning in late August, my husband Bruce came rushing…

  • Beetlemania

    “Congratulations, Mom!” the email from my oldest son, Steve, said. “You finally have an organism named after you. Semiotus is a genus of very large, tropical click beetles [and] S. marciae is a species from Ecuador. Your beetle is large (about one inch) and very colorful, like all Semiotus. You’ll probably end up in quite…

  • 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…