Marcia Bonta

  • Audubon’s Pewee

    Audubon’s Pewee

    It’s a day in late May and already the nests of our eastern phoebes are bursting with nestlings preparing to fledge. Over the 47 years we have lived on our mountain, our buildings have hosted many eastern phoebe nests. Some buildings, such as the guesthouse portico and the old outhouse, contained nests for several decades,…

  • The Beautiful Beech

    Ghostly leaves of American beech trees sway in February storms like tiny spirits alive in a frozen world.  But only small and medium-sized beech trees hold on to their leaves throughout the winter. In the fall, I watch the toothed, leathery, single beech leaves turn from green to gold.  Then the gold leaks from them…

  • In Search of Nature

    “It’s too darned hot,” I said on our 45th wedding anniversary. The temperature was heading into the high, humid nineties so we shelved our plan to take a hike. Instead, we followed Plan B and on a late August morning, my husband Bruce and I drove to the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art in…