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Redtails in Love
March is courtship time for red-tailed hawks. Most have spent their winters farther south, but for over a decade we have had at least one in residence throughout the winter months. We’re liable to hear its piercing whistle on even the coldest winter days or watch it being harassed by the local crow gang. Often…
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Middle Creek Midwinter
Two miles from Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, the sky suddenly filled up with skeins of greater snow geese. It was mid-February, just after a rainstorm, and my husband Bruce, my father and I had come to see the amazing spectacle of greater snow geese (Anser caerulescens atlantica) on State Game Lands 46 in Lancaster…
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Arizona’s Passenger Pigeon
Habitat loss is affecting wildlife populations worldwide. Although the loss of forests has received the most attention, the loss of native grasslands is even more devastating. Scientists estimate that 99% of our native prairie is gone. Here in Pennsylvania grassland bird populations have declined significantly in the southeast and south central parts of the state…
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Flowering Trees of Spring
Last spring was wonderful for those of us who admire the blossoms of deciduous forest trees. The heat wave at the end of March brought out many flowering trees two weeks earlier than usual. Continual cold throughout April and early May kept them in their blossoming stage for weeks instead of days which gave me…
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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,…
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Superflight
Last winter was the kind of winter birders dream of. Not only did we have a classic “irruption” of winter birds from the north but a “superflight” in which all the highly irruptive finches–pine grosbeak, purple finch, common redpoll, hoary redpoll, pine siskin, evening grosbeak, red crossbill, and white-winged crossbill, as well as the red-breasted…
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Owls of Winter
January is great horned owl month on our mountain. Not only are their hoots the quintessential signature of long, silent, moonlit, winter nights, but they are also more visible in the day time. During the rest of the year I may have an occasional glimpse of one as it flies from a roost, but my…
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Furry Raiders
I knew there was going to be trouble last autumn when the acorn, black walnut, beechnut and hickory crops failed. Our mountain then supported the largest population of eastern gray squirrels in the 26 years we have lived here. Every acre of forest contained leafy squirrel nests tucked high in the tallest deciduous trees. And…
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Wily Hole Digger
Forget Groundhog Day! It’s a scam. Around here most woodchucks don’t appear until March, although we have recorded them as early as February 25. But March is the official wakeup month for most Pennsylvania woodchucks and when they emerge they are interested in sex, not in predicting the weather. First the males appear and wander…
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Winter Survival Champions
“It’s amazing. I can’t believe there’s anything here,” exclaimed Dr. Joseph Merritt. Resident Director of Powdermill Nature Reserve, the biological field station of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History and author of Guide to the Mammals of Pennsylvania, Merritt is a specialist in small mammals. To learn more about the lives of such creatures as…
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Irrupting Birds
Every winter birdwatchers hope for an irruption of boreal birds from the northern forests. This “irruption” or irregular migratory movement southward of birds that ordinarily live and breed in Canada and Alaska include glamour species such as pine and evening grosbeaks, purple finches, red and white-winged crossbills, pine siskins, common and hoary redpolls, red-breasted nuthatches,…
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Marcia Bonta 