Marcia Bonta

  • The Feeders at Night

    Every fall, in early November, I hang two bird feeders from our back porch latticework. One is an open, wooden platform feeder that has been batted apart at least three times by black bears and patiently repaired by my husband Bruce. That feeder is now almost 34 years old and has great sentimental value to…

  • Naming the Benches

    Getting older is not a condition I like to admit to. Putting benches beside our trails, as my husband Bruce wanted to do, struck me as an acknowledgment that time, for us, was marching on. I preferred to sit on a hot seat at the base of a tree at one with Nature. “Well, I…

  • Latham’s Acre

    Land Manager John Dzemyan is a man with a mission. He wants every hunter in Pennsylvania to see his 150 deer exclosures on state gamelands in McKean and Elk counties. Only then will they understand the terrific damage an overabundant deer herd does to the forest, a forest that sustains not only deer but bear,…

  • Furry Raiders

    I knew there was going to be trouble last autumn when the acorn, black walnut, beechnut and hickory crops failed. Our mountain then supported the largest population of eastern gray squirrels in the 26 years we have lived here. Every acre of forest contained leafy squirrel nests tucked high in the tallest deciduous trees. And…

  • Wily Hole Digger

    Forget Groundhog Day! It’s a scam. Around here most woodchucks don’t appear until March, although we have recorded them as early as February 25. But March is the official wakeup month for most Pennsylvania woodchucks and when they emerge they are interested in sex, not in predicting the weather. First the males appear and wander…

  • Winter Survival Champions

    “It’s amazing. I can’t believe there’s anything here,” exclaimed Dr. Joseph Merritt. Resident Director of Powdermill Nature Reserve, the biological field station of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History and author of Guide to the Mammals of Pennsylvania, Merritt is a specialist in small mammals. To learn more about the lives of such creatures as…