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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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brown thrasher

April 28, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Cold drizzle. A brown thrasher improvises at the woods’ edge, and I spot the first tent caterpillar web—a tiny white flag in a wild cherry.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black cherry, brown thrasher, rain, tent caterpillars
April 17, 2015 by Dave Bonta

A brown thrasher’s loud improvisations. For a moment I think some new type of tree is in bloom, but it’s only the rain beading every twig.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags brown thrasher, rain
April 18, 2013 by Dave Bonta

The brown thrasher who’s been improvising steadily for half an hour falls silent. A moment later I hear the cak-cak-cak of a Cooper’s hawk.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags brown thrasher, Cooper's hawk, hawks
April 25, 2011 by Dave Bonta

A white haze on the bank above the road: the shadbush is finally beginning to blossom. A brown thrasher in the yard says everything twice.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags brown thrasher, shadbush 4 Comments
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On This Day

  • April 5, 2025
    Overcast and quiet, after the drama of a thunderstorm at dawn. The creekside currant bushes have turned intensely green. A hen turkey’s peevish rasp.
  • April 5, 2024
    Dark and overcast at dawn. The creek has subsided—a hubbub rather than a roar. The cardinal who roosts in the red cedar next to the…
  • April 5, 2022
    Sunnier than promised at mid morning. The singers have slowed—wren, phoebe, field sparrow—as if in dialogue with silence.
  • April 5, 2021
    Lust is in the air: a turkey gobbling in the field, a Cooper’s hawk calling in the woods, and right in front of me, a…
  • April 5, 2020
    Again this morning around 10:30, for the fifth day in a row, a Cooper’s hawk calls up in the woods. In the hawk’s mind, it…

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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