Marcia Bonta

"s two specialties were s and birds, but during a trip he took north with and his sister Eva in 1823, he also collected plants. That may have been when Maria first discovered that she preferred botany too, since she preserved the specimens he "pulled up." Bachman also instilled in Maria his own habit of referring to plants by their scientific names."

". s have had a bad press because of their propensity to lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species who not only do not recognized the eggs or resulting hatchlings as strangers, but will feed the pushy youngsters to the detriment of their own blood relations. The sound of their liquid song in a still-silent woods is, nevertheless, a welcome sign of spring. And to watch several males lined up beside a female, giving what bird behaviorists Donald and Lilian Stokes call their "topple-over" display in an effort to win the female for their own, is one my earliest spring entertainments. Today, in the tree in my back yard, they performed the ceremony for the first time this spring."

"s are most famous for their -killing prowess. Because they are quick on their feet, they attack porcupines head on, circling and lunging at the creatures and biting their faces until they exhaust and hurt them. Then they flip them on their backs and eat their quill-less throats and bellies."

"Young raccoons usually spend the winter in a communal nest with their mother and sometimes other raccoons, as many as twenty-three, in a state of semihibernation, once they have built up a layer of fat to sustain themselves during winter food shortages. Those dens are most often in hollow trees but can also be under tree roots, in rocky crevices, or in remodeled , , fox or skunk dens."

"The lives and thoughts of American women field naturalists as researched and presented by Marcia Myers Bonta make a raadable and thought-provoking book. The book includes 18th-century "pioneers," early "naturalists" such as , an experimenter with s and a correspondent of Darwins, and botanists, entomologists, s, and ecologists up to Rachel Carson in the 20th century."