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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

  • February 21, 2025
    Gray skies and a bitter wind. Snowflakes keep finding the open book in my lap; I sweep them off with a glove before they can…
  • February 21, 2024
    Cold and mostly clear at sunrise. Long before the sun clears the ridge, the bright red cardinal is tapping at all my windows.
  • February 21, 2023
    Interval of sun on a rainy morning—the forest shines and steams. The distant yammering of a pileated. The interstate’s whine.
  • February 21, 2022
    Sun shining through thin, high clouds. An inversion layer turns the rumble of a freight train into something I can feel in my chest.
  • February 21, 2021
    Bone-achingly cold. A squirrel navigating the tulip tree walks on the undersides of snowy limbs. Sunrise stains the western ridge blood-red.

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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