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Giant Silkworm Moths
On a warm day in late June, our caretaker couple Troy and Paula Scott was painting our barn. Around noon they spotted a female promethea moth clinging to her newly-vacated cocoon, which dangled from a spicebush branch. The Scotts called us to come and take a look at this gorgeous, velvety, giant silkworm moth. A…
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The Amazing Mayapple
After twelve years, the first mayapples bloomed inside our three-acre deer exclosure. Almost as soon as we put the fence up in March 2001, mayapple leaves popped up in the lower, wet, wooded section of the exclosure. But they were single leaves, not the double leaves with a notch in the middle from which a…
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Vernal Pond Adventures
Once again I’m sitting beside our mountaintop vernal pond and wondering if this will be the year the wood frogs will make it out of the pond before the water disappears. A wood frog’s life span is about seven years, and for six years the pond has dried up before the wood frogs’ have fully…
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A Balmy March
Ah March! How eagerly we await it as we look for signs of spring between blasts of freezing winds and occasional warm days. On one windy day in mid-March, the first returning turkey vulture flies along Sapsucker Ridge. A calm, warm day brings back a singing field sparrow or eastern phoebe. As the earth thaws,…
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Valentine Eagle
Trail cam photos of the golden eagle at the spruce grove bait pile (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through to view the slideshow) “Can you identify this bird?” The question came to me via email last Valentine’s Day from our caretaker wife, Paula Scott. Accompanying her email was a photo from one…
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Black-legged Ticks
This marks the 20th anniversary of my column for the Pennsylvania Game News. The first appeared in January 1993 and concerned the Carolina wren. Thanks for reading! —Marcia Last January I walked along the Black Gum Trail. Since our son, Dave, constructed the trail halfway up Laurel Ridge, back in the 1990s, I had never…
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Christmas books for nature-lovers
Christmas is coming and even in this super-technological world, some of us still like to curl up with a good book. If you are such a person or if someone like that is on your Christmas list, you might be interested in one of the following books. Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing…
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White-Crowned Sparrows
The white-crowned sparrows must be wondering about our strange weather. Last October, near the end of their fall migration, they were met here by a heavy snowstorm. For the first time I can remember, we even had a white-crown at our feeder area from October 31 through November 2. Usually, I see them during their…
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The Migration of Common Green Darners
After a hot, humid day in early September, a large swarm of common green darner dragonflies hunted for food above the barn bank. Our son, Dave, had alerted me to the phenomenon, and we stood watching as the dragonflies darted about. Dave tried to catch one in my insect net, but every time he zigged,…
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Visit from a Hairy-tailed Mole
Here’s the video our son Dave made of our hairy-tailed mole. Listen for a cardinal cheering, the calls of eastern wood-pewees and eastern towhees, train whistles, and a loud plane going over as well as vehicles from the interstate as background sounds. On a cool, clear morning in late August, my husband Bruce came rushing…
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Connecting Wild Lands
In the midst of the worst heat wave last July, we were asked to host John Davis, who wanted to camp out on our property. Son of Mary Byrd Davis, author of Old Growth in the East: A Survey and editor of Eastern Old-Growth Forests: Prospects for Rediscovery and Recovery, Davis is as committed to…
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Marcia Bonta 