Marcia Bonta

  • Losses and Gains

    Losses and Gains

    Last August, near the end of the month, it was finally clear, cool, and free of the bothersome mosquitoes and gnats that make hiking in the hot, humid summer unpleasant. Still, I had persevered most days when it wasn’t storming. On this August day, I chose to walk along Ten Springs Trail. That trail is…

  • A Walk in Penn’s Woods

    A Walk in Penn’s Woods

    Last autumn, on a hot, humid Sunday afternoon in early October, my son Dave and I led a Walk in Penn’s Woods on our property. This program, begun in 2017 by the Center for Private Forests at Penn State, has attracted support from both private and public land owners eager to share their forests and…

  • Food for Wildlife

    After three lean years, our oak trees finally produced a bumper crop of acorns last September. Forewarned by hordes of blue jays screaming from the treetops as they plucked ripe acorns from the oaks, I had to be careful on our steep trails not to slide on the fallen nuts that were more hazardous than…

  • White-footed Mice

    “I think mice are rather nice.” So began the children’s poem by Rose Amy Fyleman that I read to my three sons when they were young. Fyleman was an English writer who lived in earlier times (1877-1957) and her mice were not the primary hosts for the larvae and nymphs of black-legged (Lyme disease) ticks…

  • The Value of Aging Trees

    On a hot July day, I sit beneath a large red oak, nestled into a deep buttress, one of several that flare out from this 200-year-old tree. The ground beneath the tree is littered with old acorn remnants as are the bases of the other elders in this stand of deciduous trees. Protected as a…

  • Christmas books for nature-lovers

    Christmas is coming and even in this super-technological world, some of us still like to curl up with a good book. If you are such a person or if someone like that is on your Christmas list, you might be interested in one of the following books. Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing…

  • Connecting Wild Lands

    In the midst of the worst heat wave last July, we were asked to host John Davis, who wanted to camp out on our property. Son of Mary Byrd Davis, author of Old Growth in the East: A Survey and editor of Eastern Old-Growth Forests: Prospects for Rediscovery and Recovery, Davis is as committed to…

  • June Surprises

    June is often the most exciting month of the year. Then I can count on close encounters with black bears on our trails. Not only are last year’s cubs on their own, but their mothers are being hotly pursued by eager males. We also add new species to Bioplum, a natural inventory of our property.…

  • Red Maples: A Celebration of Red

    Sometime in mid-March, after the eastern phoebes have returned, our red maple tree buds turn a deeper scarlet, adding welcome color to our forest. Shortly thereafter I catch the faint scent of their opening red and orange flowers. The clusters of dangling, bell-shaped red flowers with red forked tongues (stigmas) are female while the orange…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Early Spring

    Instead of April showers last year, we had unprecedented heat.  On April 2, it was 80 degrees Fahrenheit.  Flowers and trees bloomed days and even weeks ahead of records I’ve been keeping since 1971. By the middle of the month, we had a May woods.  Even the mayapples bloomed in April. During the first half…