Marcia Bonta

  • Central Appalachian Fishers

    It was near the beginning of the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s reintroduction of fishers to the commonwealth. This second largest member of the weasel family had last been documented in Pennsylvania when it was trapped in 1921 at Holtwood, in Lancaster County. Denise Mitcheltree, then a graduate student at Penn State back in May of 1995,…

  • The Joy of Trail Cams

    All photos and videos in this column are from trail cams on the mountain placed and monitored by the Scotts. (If you’re reading this via email or in a feed reader, you may have to click through to see the videos.) Almost as soon as they settled into their new home, back in 2009, our…

  • The Black Cat Returns

    Most days I spend at least a couple hours walking in our woods. Unlike the nature shows on television, weeks can pass before I encounter, for instance, a mother bear and her cubs, a waddling porcupine, an unusual bird or plant, a bounding short-tailed weasel, a newborn fawn, or some other sighting that makes my…