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Jeremiad
In honor of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change‘s dire predictions, I found the following in Peter Matthiessen’s End of the Earth, published in 2003: I seek to understand phenomena that might help our self-destroying species to appreciate the shimmering web of biodiversity in the Earth process, the common miracles, fleeting as ocean birds, which…
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“White Face”
Years ago, when we owned a dog, we fed him on the back porch. One early April evening we heard a commotion outside. I opened the kitchen door and saw Fritz sniffing at an opossum, which was laid out flat on its side, its eyes tightly shut, its mouth stretched in a gruesome grin that…
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March Journal Highlights
Arizona Sojourn March 20. Because a snowstorm developed the day before we were to leave for the Pittsburgh airport and flight to Memphis, Bruce hurried us out a day early, on March 7, and we barely made it down our road, chains on all four tires, through six new inches of snow. But at least…
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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…
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February Journal Highlights, Part 2
Last day of the Great Backyard Bird Count February 19. Seven degrees at dawn and clear but quickly warming up to eleven degrees. In the middle of my daily exercises, Bruce came into the bedroom to say, “I think I heard a bluebird singing.” Could it be? I rushed outside, binoculars in hand, listened and…
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February Journal Highlights
I’ve been updating my journal from the notes I take in my pocket notebook. Here are some excerpts from the first half of February. Bucks hanging out together, still wearing antlers February 3. Three degrees at dawn and absolutely clear. Winds cleaned the air and lowered the temperature throughout the moonlit night. At first, when…
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Sy Montgomery books for kids
I have read all three of the books by Sy Montgomery in the Houghton Mifflin “Scientists in the Field” series for kids in the 9 to 12 range. They are excellent. All have wonderful photos by Nic Bishop that accompany a fascinating text. The Snake Scientist discusses the thousands of red-sided garter snakes that hibernate…
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The Magnificent Log-Cocks
On bleak winter days, when the forest seems empty of life, I am often cheered by the sight and sound of pileated woodpeckers. Looking like miniature pterodactyls, they flash their black-and- white wings over a black-and-white landscape. Pileateds are also the big mouths of the woodpecker world, their demonic-sounding laughter echoing from ridgetop to ridgetop…
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What’s in a Name?
After a brief walk on a cold and dreary January day, I curled up in my study and tried to update Bioplum, a natural inventory of our property. Last spring I had finally identified a nondescript-looking wildflower spreading along our roadbank as Pennsylvania bittercress (Cardamine pensylvanica), and I wanted to add it to our list…
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Snowshoeing for Birds
For twenty-five years I have gone out on foot to count both bird species and numbers for the annual Christmas Bird Count, popularly known as the CBC. But last December was a first for me. I did the CBC on snowshoes! I was thrilled by the deep snow and cold weather that had started with…
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Thanksgiving Bird
Ah! Thanksgiving. It’s usually one of my favorite holidays. I had baked the pies and cooked the cranberries the day before and, despite a crashing headache and nausea, had made the bulgur stuffing right after breakfast before crawling back into bed. A few minutes later our son Steve called to say that he and his…
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They Came and They Went
It took house finches almost 43 years to make it from Jones Beach, Long Island, where birders identified the first wild eastern house finches, to our mountaintop in central Pennsylvania, even though they had been frequenting bird feeders in nearby valleys for seven years. I know the exact date the first house finches appeared at…
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Marcia Bonta 