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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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hummingbird sphinx moth

July 27, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Cool beginning to a hot day. I can’t stop watching the hummingbird sphinx moths, their retractable drinking straws as quick as thought.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags hummingbird sphinx moth
July 22, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Goldfinches go on chittering the entire time I sit outside, poring over a trail map. One hummingbird sphinx moth works the bergamot.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, bergamot, hummingbird sphinx moth
May 23, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The lilacs are fading fast. Where did the spring go? A hummingbird moth pays court to the dame’s-rockets—the new avatars of purple scent.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket, hummingbird sphinx moth, lilac, moths

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On This Day

  • June 12, 2025
    Breezy and cool. A brown moth flutters into the last of the dame’s-rocket. Sunlight glints on the isinglass wings of a cicada heading for the treetops.
  • June 12, 2024
    Cold and partly clear. A distant motorcycle accelerates and shifts gears. A cranefly drifts past, improbable as a steam-punk contraption.
  • June 12, 2023
    Rain! That unfamiliar whisper rising to the level of a murmur. And a Carolina wren rushing about, making sure the world knows.
  • June 12, 2022
    When the clouds move off, an orbweaver’s web appears in the corner of a porch balustrade, shimmering as it pulses in the breeze.
  • June 12, 2021
    Wet, but at least it’s not raining. Wood thrush, vireo and tanager songs mingle at the woods’ edge. The wingbeats of a catbird.

See all...

Related book

Cover of Ice Mountain with a linocut of a big ridgetop tree.

What I do after I sit on the porch. One winter and spring's daily walks distilled into short poems with linocut illustrations by Beth Adams.

Header image: detail from Paper Garden by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (used by permission)

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