Marcia Bonta

  • October’s Bright Blue Weather

    Another October has come and gone and Dad was not here to see “October’s bright blue weather.” Even though he was born in January in the midst of a blizzard, I always thought of October as his month. Maybe that’s because not an October went by without him reciting Helen Hunt Jackson’s “October’s Bright Blue…

  • The Biodiversity of Lake Pleasant

    On a bright, breezy day in early June we paddled a canoe around Lake Pleasant, one of eight glacial lakes in northwestern Pennsylvania.  Despite its prosaic name, the 64-acre lake in eastern Erie County has more natural diversity along its shoreline, in its surrounding wetlands, and in the lake itself than any other lake in…

  • Down the Allegheny

    A spectacular first day of June and my husband Bruce and I are heading down the river with the “Admiral of the Allegheny.”  Dick Krear likes the honorary title and deserves it.  As an unpaid River Keeper, he keeps a vigilant eye on human activities along the Allegheny from Franklin to Foxburg. He has also…

  • Saving Box Turtles

    Imagine digging a trench for a box turtle enclosure in one hundred degree heat! That’s what an army of volunteers did back in July 1999 at the Buttermilk Hill Nature Sanctuary in northwestern Pennsylvania. “It took an hour to dig a yard,” Dr. William Belzer of Clarion University told my husband Bruce and me when…

  • Fool’s Errand

    Perhaps it was the memory of a rainy April day at the Brucker Great Blue Heron Sanctuary of Thiel College, or perhaps it was my admiration for these elegant waterbirds and the chance to see them once again going about their familial tasks. Whatever the reason, I had volunteered to participate in a statewide survey…

  • 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…

  • Summer’s Fiddlers

    He stalked through the grasses, ears cupped, head down. Then he squatted, still listening and looking. Steve Rannels was pursuing crickets and katydids behind the Middle Creek Management Area’s Visitors Center. My husband Bruce and I had been fascinated by the compact disc Rannels, Wil Hershberger and Joseph Dillon had recently released entitled “Songs of…

  • Theodora Cope Gray – Nature’s Own Child

    She died as she had wished, propped up in her bed so she could watch the birds at her feeder. At 94 years of age, Teddy Gray had lived a long and interesting life. She would say that her happiest days were those spent when she was married to Philip Gray whom she wed when…

  • The Delaware Connection

    To save a stream valley shared by two states seems an impossible dream, especially when the states are in the thickly populated eastern corridor. But that’s exactly what Pennsylvania and Delaware did. On the Pennsylvania side, in southeastern Chester County, the 1,253-acre White Clay Creek Preserve is the only preserve in the Pennsylvania state park…

  • Visiting Old Growth

    Sometimes you have to work to see an old growth forest. That’s what my husband Bruce, our son Dave, and I decided as we labored up the steep, rocky, north side of Paddy Mountain one summer day. We were following the unmarked Joyce Kilmer Trail through the Joyce Kilmer Natural Area in Bald Eagle State…

  • 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…