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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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chimney swifts

June 24, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Breezy, cool and clear, with chimney swifts circling high overhead and a single raven hurtling past without flapping a wing.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chimney swifts, raven
July 22, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Chimney swifts circle high overhead as the last bats head home. The sun rising through small clouds is crowned by dark spokes.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bats, chimney swifts, sunrise
September 27, 2017 by Dave Bonta

‪Cedar waxwings crowd into the tops of the tall locusts, harried by goldfinches. High above, two swifts arc and swoop against the blue.‬

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, black locust, cedar waxwing, chimney swifts
May 26, 2013 by Dave Bonta

The Baltimore oriole flies from treetop to treetop, laying claim to the yard. A lone chimney swift cuts arabesques in the cobalt blue sky.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Baltimore oriole, chimney swifts
August 27, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The low cloud ceiling is a tabula rasa for the arabesques of chimney swifts. A high-pitched rasping in the trees–some insomniac katydid.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chimney swifts, katydids

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On This Day

  • October 20, 2025
    Wind and rain at dawn. Half an hour before sunrise, a great twittering erupts from the meadow as hundreds of white-throated sparrows, sheltering deep in the goldenrod, begin to awaken.
  • October 20, 2024
    Patches of frost in the yard. The old lilac at the woods’ edge has chosen this time to partially re-leaf after the summer’s drought: half-sized, bright green leaves against the thinning trees.
  • October 20, 2023
    Between dawn and sunrise, a small rainstorm’s pleasant susurration drowns out everything else. As it eases, a Carolina wren takes over, caroling in a minor key.
  • October 20, 2022
    Dawn brings a chittering of sparrows from the meadow. It’s cold. Frost edges the periwinkle leaves.
  • October 20, 2021
    Sunrise inches forward, chirp by chirp: towhee, white-throated sparrow. A rabbit gazes at me from the end of the porch with eyes dark as cisterns.

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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