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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

  • November 9, 2025
    Thick fog. When the wren stops singing, there’s dead silence for several minutes until a nuthatch calls. From father away, the death-cry of a rabbit.
  • November 9, 2024
    One degree above freezing and very still. The sun’s slow climb through bare branches. The sound of gnawing rodent teeth in three directions.
  • November 9, 2023
    it starts raining just as I come out on the porch, completing the November trinity: cold, gray, and wet. Goldfinch chatter. The keening of truck tires on the interstate.
  • November 9, 2022
    Clear and cold. With the power out, morning is a logistical challenge, but when I have the time to sit, the sparrows are singing as usual.
  • November 9, 2021
    Dawn silence. A distant Carolina wren. I'm standing outside in my PJs enjoying the relative warmth (38F) when I spot the first cloud in days.

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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