p iThe Wingless Crow ijoins together thirty-three superb short essays on nature, science, country living, and self. They are written by a man who--watchful, inquisitive, at times prickly--is animated by delight, wonder, and love for the rural places and wildlife of Pennsylvania. Charles Fergus wrote these insightful pieces for his monthly column, Thornapples, which ran in iPennsylvania Game News imagazine from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. They are based on many hours spent hiking, skiing, botanizing, and observing wild creatures, as well as trips to libraries and hours spent with books, teasing out information about the objects of his interest. ppThe writing is simple and vivid, rendered dramatic through the delivery of carefully chosen details. Fergus scrutinizes a captured dragonfly and sees a bubble of a hide through which organs glimmer. He recalls a night in a tent when lightning shook the ground. He tells about topographic maps and deerflies and auctions and poisonous mu