-
Lion Country?
It seems as if everywhere I go, I hear stories about mountain lions. Not just in Pennsylvania, but Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, and West Virginia. New England has also produced a rash of plausible sightings. What is happening? Has the eastern mountain lion or cougar (Puma concolor couguar), as biologists prefer to call it, returned…
-
Visitors from the River
Occasionally we are reminded that the Little Juniata River flows past the northeast end of our mountain when unexpected visitors from the river appear here. Imagine, for instance, my husband Bruce’s surprise when driving down our narrow, gravel, wooded, hollow road one spring morning and encountering a large snapping turtle plodding up toward him. This…
-
Under the Spruce Grove
Twenty-five years ago my husband Bruce and I planted 2000 Norway spruce seedlings at the top of First Field and 2000 red pine seedlings at the Far Field. The seedlings were courtesy of the Westvaco paper mill in Tyrone. The tree planter, which we hitched to our secondhand, Massey-Ferguson tractor, had been borrowed from the…
-
The Feeders at Night
Every fall, in early November, I hang two bird feeders from our back porch latticework. One is an open, wooden platform feeder that has been batted apart at least three times by black bears and patiently repaired by my husband Bruce. That feeder is now almost 34 years old and has great sentimental value to…
-
Insects of Indian Summer
By November most insects are either dead or hibernating, but some species, both native and alien, are aroused by the soft warmth of Indian summer. Once again the fields and forests sing with a quieter rendition of the grasshopper-cricket-katydid chorus of late summer and early fall. Bristly great leopard moth and woolly bear caterpillars unfurl…
-
South for the Winter
Sometime in mid to late August, the first wave of migrating warblers moves through our yard. They come in early morning to feed after flying much of the night. Their appearance signals the passing of the first cold front with a north wind and clear skies that helps them fly more quickly and easily. This…
-
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…
-
Minstrel of the Woods
I don’t have to leave this planet to hear the music of the spheres. Surely, listening to wood thrushes singing is as ethereal an experience as any mortal can hope for on earth. Many evenings, when I step outside, wood thrush song envelops me and it seems as if all the world’s wood thrushes are…
-
Naming the Benches
Getting older is not a condition I like to admit to. Putting benches beside our trails, as my husband Bruce wanted to do, struck me as an acknowledgment that time, for us, was marching on. I preferred to sit on a hot seat at the base of a tree at one with Nature. “Well, I…
-
Latham’s Acre
Land Manager John Dzemyan is a man with a mission. He wants every hunter in Pennsylvania to see his 150 deer exclosures on state gamelands in McKean and Elk counties. Only then will they understand the terrific damage an overabundant deer herd does to the forest, a forest that sustains not only deer but bear,…
-
Saving Riparian Forests
Our Plummer’s Hollow stream is a faint, unnamed blue line on Highbee’s stream map of Pennsylvania. Although it is only a mile and a half long and its streambed is less than ten feet wide, it greatly influences the streamside or riparian forest through which it flows. The riparian forest, in turn, is essential to…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Marcia Bonta 