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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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black-billed cuckoo

May 22, 2021 by Dave Bonta

The black cherry blossoms are already fading, and the sun is going from dandelion-yellow to dandelion seedhead-white. Black-billed cuckoo.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black cherry, black-billed cuckoo, clouds
June 8, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Both species of native cuckoos are calling. A dragonfly courses back and forth across the sun-drenched yard until I almost see it as a pond.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black-billed cuckoo, dragonflies, yellow-billed cuckoo
May 25, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Humid. An indigo bunting flits from bush to bush in the yard—all likely nest spots. The mechanical-sounding call of a black-billed cuckoo.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black-billed cuckoo, indigo bunting
October 9, 2018 by Dave Bonta

A black-billed cuckoo skulks through the lilac, elegant despite its hunched posture, its pointy-winged flight. A blue-headed vireo calls.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black-billed cuckoo, blue-headed vireo

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On This Day

  • April 4, 2025
    A damp and gloomy sunrise. Juncos twitter in the tops of black birches. A cowbird’s liquid note.
  • April 4, 2024
    Thick fog brightening in the east. Over the roar of the creek, a phoebe’s small, inexhaustible engine.
  • April 4, 2022
    Bare branches mellowing the sun’s blaze. Two crows fly into the woods and one flies out. There are eight million stories in the naked forest.
  • April 4, 2021
    Just enough upper-atmosphere haze to soften the sun from glare to glow. Today the hepaticas will open—I’m sure of it.
  • April 4, 2020
    Overcast and still. The gobbling of a wild turkey up in the field echoes off the ridge—a startling thing to hear once, let alone twice.

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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