Marcia Bonta

  • The Beautiful Beech

    Ghostly leaves of American beech trees sway in February storms like tiny spirits alive in a frozen world.  But only small and medium-sized beech trees hold on to their leaves throughout the winter. In the fall, I watch the toothed, leathery, single beech leaves turn from green to gold.  Then the gold leaks from them…

  • 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…

  • Talking with Chris Bolgiano about nature writing and the environment

    Check out the two-part conversation between Marcia and her friend Chris Bolgiano, a naturalist-writer from the mountains of western Virginia, at the Woodrat Podcast: Part 1, Tales from the Nature-Writing Trenches, and Part 2, Greening the Appalachians.

  • The Tree of Great Peace

    The Iroquois called it the “Tree of Great Peace.” Its cluster of five needles to a bundle represented the five nations of the Iroquois and its spreading roots, reaching east, north, west, and south were the roots of peace that extended to all peoples. We call this tree, more prosaically, eastern white pine — Pinus…

  • An Enigmatic Warbler

    “Wee, wee, wee, wee, bzzz” sings my favorite yard bird.  For two months most years — mid-May to mid-July — the male cerulean warbler sings his monotonous song from dawn until dusk. The first year this happened, back in 2002, I worried that he hadn’t found a mate.  Why else would he sing on and…

  • Mountain Meadows

    Imagine receiving a gift of 113 acres on Tussey Mountain.  That’s what happened to Mike and Laura Jackson back in 1988 when Laura’s parents, Richard and Phyllis Hershberger, gave them a portion of their farm.  The Jacksons named their property Mountain Meadows and built a home with large windows for wildlife viewing. Part of the…

  • Saving the Future

    “I’m convinced that something has to be done to keep cows out of the stream,” David Heverly told me. And so he had enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, which is better known by its acronym CREP. A federal program authorized and funded under the current Farm Bill, it is administered by the Farm…

  • Life at a Vernal Pond

    It was not the year to observe our vernal ponds. But how was I to know that? After two years of more precipitation than usual, all the depressions on top of Sapsucker Ridge beneath the oak and black cherry forest had filled with water. In late March, I counted four ponds. Three of them were…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • 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…