Dave Bonta

March 9, 2009

Dave Bonta March 9, 2009

A rapid whistling of wings: a woodcock hurtles through the yard at eye-level. Thank you, Congress, for giving back our slow, dark mornings.

March 8, 2009

Dave Bonta March 8, 2009

The distant drumming of a pileated woodpecker is the loudest thing. A faint rustle in the field, the yard, the woods as the rain moves in.

March 7, 2009

Dave Bonta March 7, 2009

A warm morning—53°F. A Cooper’s hawk calls, a screech owl trills, but the squirrels go on rummaging through the leaf litter. I spy a gnat.

March 6, 2009

Dave Bonta March 6, 2009

A long dark streak on the red maple beside the road: sap is rising. A crow at the top of the tallest pine hunkers down to deliver every caw.

March 5, 2009

Dave Bonta March 5, 2009

A downy woodpecker plays a dead locust limb like a marimba, moving rapidly from pitch to pitch, a tremor of red against the blue sky.

March 4, 2009

Dave Bonta March 4, 2009

Right after a mourning dove’s song, a screech owl trills at the very same pitch. The sun floats free of the horizon and into the bluest sky.

March 3, 2009

Dave Bonta March 3, 2009

Cold air, bright sun. Snow-motes drift down from a cloudless sky. A mourning dove’s song. Dad calls to tell me Mom’s having dizzy spells.

March 2, 2009

Dave Bonta March 2, 2009

A groundhog emerges from the culvert and rears up to survey a route to the next female’s burrow. His head swivels, following a noisy crow.

March 1, 2009

Dave Bonta March 1, 2009

Just two, isolated caks in half an hour, but I’m almost certain it’s a Cooper’s hawk turning over his rusty courtship motor. Happy March!

February 28, 2009

Dave Bonta February 28, 2009

The local geese seem restless, flying from valley to valley as if trying to remember how to migrate. Four juncos in the road gathering grit.

February 27, 2009

Dave Bonta February 27, 2009

A downpour. Just above the ridge, a sudden flash followed by a teeth-rattling rumble, the outline of an inverted tree fading on my retina.

February 26, 2009

Dave Bonta February 26, 2009

I keep hearing fragments of song—winter wren, bluebird, song sparrow—and the usual tight flock of siskins in a walnut tree going zzzzzzip.

February 25, 2009

Dave Bonta 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 24, 2009

Dave Bonta February 24, 2009

Cloudless and cold at sunrise. Two titmice drone back and forth, like a pair of insurance agents at a party trying to out-bore each other.

The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow