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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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brown creeper

August 26, 2012December 21, 2010 by Dave Bonta

Solstice sunrise turns the western ridge red as an altar. A brown creeper fishes in all the dark valleys of the walnut tree’s bark.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, brown creeper, solstice, sunrise 5 Comments
August 26, 2012October 31, 2010 by Dave Bonta

Below the porch, a dot of pink: a very late dame’s-rocket blooming the day after a hard frost. A brown creeper inspects a small walnut tree.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, brown creeper, dame's-rocket, frost
January 18, 2010 by Dave Bonta

The overcast sky looks the same, but the light turns from glow to dull in just 15 minutes. I watch a brown creeper but hear only nuthatches.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags brown creeper, white-breasted nuthatch
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On This Day

  • April 3, 2025
    Hard rain slackening after sunrise. As the drumming on the roofs subsides, I can hear a torrent of Carolina wren song and towhee calls.
  • April 3, 2024
    In the pre-dawn darkness, nothing but the sounds of rain and water. A low rumbling comes from the hole in my yard that leads down…
  • April 3, 2022
    An unexpected glimpse of sun sets the swelling lilac buds aglow. I see the first few daffodils are trying on the new spring fashions.
  • April 3, 2021
    Cooper’s hawks calling up on the ridge. One of them takes flight: such a small bird to be so strident! And the sky begins to…
  • April 3, 2020
    Sun silvering black birch twigs. From the woods beyond, the call of a Cooper’s hawk. It can’t be long till the first shadbush blooms.

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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