Marcia Bonta

  • Gamelands Tour

    I’ve always preferred to walk rather than drive through the fields and forests of Pennsylvania. Still, I was tempted last October by a driving tour in nearby State Gamelands #108 and persuaded my husband, Bruce, to accompany me. It was a lovely autumn day when we found our way to a gamelands access road in…

  • April Songster

    Sometime in late March or early April, the first male field sparrow (Spizella pusilla) of the season sings his long down-slurring whistle that ends in an accelerating trill. Soon he is joined by other returning males, and our 37-acre First Field rings with their lovely songs.

  • Grasses Wear Robes

    We never get very far when we go on a Pennsylvania Native Plant Society field trip.  But we always learn and see more than we bargained for.  Take the grass field trip to Rothrock State Forest in central Pennsylvania that my son Dave and I joined last July.  Let by Sarah Miller of the Penn…

  • 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…

  • Grasslands of Central Pennsylvania

    On a day in late August, members of the Pennsylvania Native Plant Society visited what ecologist Roger Latham calls “wild-ungulate pastures” in Clearfield County’s Quehanna Wild Area. Latham, who has been working on a meadow and grass inventory of Pennsylvania, was searching for “meadows and grasslands that have persisted for a long while and for…

  • The Piney Tract

    “Tsi-lick” went the Henslow’s sparrows. From every direction, they called as the cold wind swept over the prairie. Only it wasn’t a prairie. It was a rolling, brushy grassland in Clarion County called the Piney Tract. Also know as Mt. Zion, it is now officially State Game Lands 330. My husband Bruce and I 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.…

  • 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…

  • Looking for Winter Raptors

    As citizen scientists become more numerous in the birding world, there is no end to the monitoring projects we can engage in. Take the WRS, for example, which stands for the Winter Raptor Survey. The brainchild of birder Greg Grove, it seems like the easiest of exercises–driving around a specific area in the middle of…

  • 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…

  • 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…