Marcia Bonta

  • Welcome Spring

    “Naturalist’s Eye” column for Pennsylvania Game News, March, 2007 I’ve closed our gate behind me after crossing the Little Juniata River and the main railroad line from New York to Chicago. Almost immediately I step into a different, older world this breezy, blue-skied day in late March. For weeks spring has played with us, blowing…

  • Return to Enlow Fork

    I never expected to be conducting a choir of American toads at Enlow Fork. After all, this state game land (#302) in southwestern Washington and Greene counties is better known for its incredible diversity of plants and birds. Yet there I was, on the first day of May, surrounded by singing toads as I sat…

  • Blithe Spirit

    Spring came in on the March wind. The dawn chorus cranked into gear. Water streamed off the mountain and, in a few days, the snow and ice were gone. We were delighted to see bare ground again, but our granddaughter Eva was disappointed. Spring had long ago arrived at her Mississippi home. She had come…

  • An Irish Spring

    “I wake and hear it raining.” So begins Mark Van Doren’s wonderful poem “Morning Worship” and so began many of my mornings last spring. Van Doren goes on to list the wonders of the natural world he would miss were he dead, praising all the “sweet beings” that he knows will outlive him–mountains, huge trees,…

  • A Walking Meditation

    Another National Migratory Bird Count day and we are blessed by a perfect May morning–cool, clear, and ringing with birdsong. This time, though, I resolve to take it easy, to move slowly and quietly, to make this day a walking meditation on the beauties of this most splendid of months. Besides, I am getting older…

  • An Aural April

    On a misty morning in early April, I set out on a listening walk. The fog was so thick I could barely make out the trail in front of me. But although my visibility was almost zero, my hearing was excellent. First I stood in our yard and listened to the assorted whistles of a…

  • Early Sounds of Spring

    By early February, bird calls begin morphing into songs. In the “fee-bee” of black-capped chickadees, the “peter-peter” of tufted titmice, and the more complex, bright caroling of house finches, I hear the beginning sounds of spring. At first the resident birds seem unaffected by the weather. The overwintering song sparrow sings “hip, hip hoorah, boys,…