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Thursday February 25, 2021

Dave Bonta February 25, 2021 0

The Cooper’s hawk lands in the yard and the doves scatter—a cacophony of flutes. He flies off east where the icy snow is a blaze of white.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged Cooper's hawk, mourning doves

Wednesday February 24, 2021

Dave Bonta February 24, 2021 0

After yesterday’s melting, the snowpack is a maze of wrinkles. The ridge turns orange. A hundred robins appear in the yard.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged American robin, snow, sunrise

Tuesday February 23, 2021

Dave Bonta February 23, 2021 0

Overcast at sunrise. The cak-cak-cak of a Cooper’s hawk beginning to think about courtship and nesting, somewhere up in the snowy woods.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged Cooper's hawk, sunrise

Monday February 22, 2021

Dave Bonta February 22, 2021 0

Snowstorm. The hammer-blows of a pileated woodpecker on what must be a very hollow dead tree. How annoyed I’d be if it were a human sound!

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged pileated woodpecker, snow, snowstorm

Sunday February 21, 2021

Dave Bonta February 21, 2021 0

Bone-achingly cold. A squirrel navigating the tulip tree walks on the undersides of snowy limbs. Sunrise stains the western ridge blood-red.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged cold, gray squirrel, snow, sunrise, tulip tree

Saturday February 20, 2021

Dave Bonta February 20, 2021 0

Large, compound snowflakes drifting this way and that. A titmouse suddenly begins darting after them, hovering and diving like a flycatcher.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged snowflakes, tufted titmouse

Friday February 19, 2021

Dave Bonta February 19, 2021 2

Four more inches of dry powder. The stream has shrunk to the thinnest black ribbon between white cliffs—a body that refuses to be buried.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged snow, stream

Thursday February 18, 2021

Dave Bonta February 18, 2021 0

Fine snow is falling, an hour before sunrise. Dogs start barking in the distance, and after a while a coyote answers—one long, wavering cry.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged coyote, dogs, snow

Wednesday February 17, 2021

Dave Bonta February 17, 2021 0

The least gloomy morning in more than a week—and also the coldest. A single-prop plane goes in and out of sunlight, trailed by its sound.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged cold, plane

Tuesday February 16, 2021

Dave Bonta February 16, 2021 2

Freezing rain past, there’s a steady rattle from the woods as the ice cladding shatters, like a glass house casting stones at itself.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged freezing rain, icestorm

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On this date

    February 25, 2020

    The corrugated steel roof over the heating oil tanks registers a small shower I might've otherwise missed: soft taps, a scattering of dots. …

    February 25, 2019

    After a night of high winds, the forest has several new squeaks and groans, but my light-weight chair hasn't moved. I sit down warily. …

    February 25, 2018

    The rain finally stops. In the woods and yard, chipmunks zip back and forth like hyperactive exoparasites on the mountain's glistening pelt. …

    February 25, 2017

    Two song sparrows in a singing contest under dark clouds. I try to hear urgency and seriousness in their bubbly notes as the sky opens up. …

    February 25, 2015

    The sun going in and out of clouds—a chickadee's shadow vanishes half-way across the yard. I'm struggling to remember the color green. …

    February 25, 2014

    The nasal alarm calls of nuthatches, one to the south and one to the north. The sun is a yellow stain on a white tablecloth. A silent raven. …

    February 25, 2013

    The sound of a single-propeller plane—a rare thing nowadays—draws my eye to a hawk circling a thermal high over the ridge's glossy snowpack. …

    February 25, 2012

    Snow blows sideways and rises from the ground in snaky spirals. A Carolina wren dances on top of the stone wall like a wind-up toy. …

    February 25, 2011

    A thumping in the crawlspace under the house and muddy footprints in the snow: the resident woodchuck is in heat. Rain drums on the roof. …

    February 25, 2010

    A large red blot has blossomed on the garden's snow. I find tufts of silky brown fur and three drops of blood in a line toward the woods. …

    February 25, 2009

    With the sun on my face I turn my eyes into camera lenses, open, shut: half-second negatives of trees, bushes, railing. Remember this. …

    February 25, 2008

    A squirrel chased off the bird feeder races all the way to the dead elm in my yard, where it sits perfectly still for the next ten minutes. …

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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.

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