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June Surprises
June is often the most exciting month of the year. Then I can count on close encounters with black bears on our trails. Not only are last year’s cubs on their own, but their mothers are being hotly pursued by eager males. We also add new species to Bioplum, a natural inventory of our property.…
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Louisiana Waterthrush
Sometime in early April, I hear the ringing song of a Louisiana waterthrush near our Plummer’s Hollow stream. One of the first neotropical migrant birds to return, he comes winging in from as far south as northern South America and southern Cuba. This handsome brown warbler, his whitish breast streaked with brown, looks more like…
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Wildflower Drive
A chorus of birds greets me this cool, foggy day — song sparrows, eastern phoebes, dark-eyed juncos, robins, and northern cardinals — all predictable on the tenth of April. And then, from the top of First Field, the imitative song of a brown thrasher unwinds. At last a sign that this late spring is underway.…
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Red Maples: A Celebration of Red
Sometime in mid-March, after the eastern phoebes have returned, our red maple tree buds turn a deeper scarlet, adding welcome color to our forest. Shortly thereafter I catch the faint scent of their opening red and orange flowers. The clusters of dangling, bell-shaped red flowers with red forked tongues (stigmas) are female while the orange…
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Return of the Bald Eagles
Eight inches of fresh snow covered Sinking Valley. It was early in February 2011 and our son, Steve, and I were conducting our annual Winter Raptor Survey while my husband, Bruce, drove the car. I had been participating in the survey every winter since Greg Grove first started this statewide count back in 2001. When…
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Beetlemania
“Congratulations, Mom!” the email from my oldest son, Steve, said. “You finally have an organism named after you. Semiotus is a genus of very large, tropical click beetles [and] S. marciae is a species from Ecuador. Your beetle is large (about one inch) and very colorful, like all Semiotus. You’ll probably end up in quite…
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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…
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Hiking the Bells Gap Rail Trail
On the last day of October, twenty friends and members of the Juniata Valley Audubon Society hiked down the Allegheny Front beginning in State Gamelands 158, following the remains of the Bells Gap Narrow-Gauge Railroad. Back in 1872, it was built from the railroad station in the Logan Valley town of Bellwood to Lloydsville, nine…
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Goodbye To All Of That
Once again the forest is almost empty of birdsong. Only an occasional blue-headed vireo holds forth. Even the waves of migrants are mostly quiet as they flit from tree to tree searching for insects and fruit. Noisy blue jays call as they harvest acorns. Eastern wood-pewees cry “pee-a-wee.” Confused looking immature ovenbirds blunder about on…
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The Unexpected and Expected
It’s the tenth of August, and I can barely believe my ears. A wood thrush is singing two weeks later than I’ve ever heard one before. Such a wonderful, unexpected gift so late in the season when most birdsong has been replaced by the buzzing and chirping of crickets and grasshoppers. But then it is…
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Lives of Woodland Snails
Imagine having the time to watch the life of a woodland snail. That’s what happened to Elizabeth Tova Bailey when she was felled by a mysterious neurological illness that put her flat on her back. She could not move without pain, and so she was tended by a caregiver in a studio apartment. Then, one…
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Marcia Bonta 