white-tailed deer – Page 14 – The Morning Porch

June 26, 2021June 26, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Bright sunshine after a night of thunderstorms. Four deer—two does and two fawns—run through the steaming woods.

June 22, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Soft applause from the road bank: a doe’s ears flapping as she shakes her head to chase away the flies.

May 15, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Sun through fog. Animals emerge and vanish like actors in a play, bringing their cries and silences: goldfinches, a raven, a pair of deer.

May 6, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The gray winter pelts of two grazing deer are just beginning to fray. The fog withdraws into the woods and the webs of grass spiders.

April 17, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Rattle and rasp from a hole in the eaves where the starlings are moving in. A pair of ravens low over the ridge. The sun’s blazing nest.

March 31, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Sunny and cold. My mother starts up the trail into the woods with her pant-legs tucked into her socks against the plague of deer ticks.

March 24, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Another cold, clear morning, with just enough wind to keep my sunlit breath from blocking my view. A killdeer calls from high overhead.

March 16, 2016March 18, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Bluebird, white-throated sparrow, a starling’s liquid note, and high overhead, a killdeer: the sky must be blue above the fog.

March 15, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Joining the robins, titmice and song sparrow in the dawn chorus: a barred owl. The deer grazing in the yard look up, swiveling their ears.

February 6, 2009 by Dave Bonta

At dawn, watching one race across open ground from bush to bush, it hits me, why rabbits have been so scarce: the deer ate the briarpatches.

January 7, 2009 by Dave Bonta

From the other house, the sound of an unfed avian mob. Four goldfinches land in the ice-covered tree in front of me and cock their heads.

December 15, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Two deer dash down the slope and up into the woods, turn around and dash back. A repeat performance five minutes later ends in a thicket.

November 28, 2008 by Dave Bonta

An hour before dawn, a deer-shaped shadow drifts out of the woods, apparitional against the snow, like the photographic negative of a ghost.

November 26, 2012November 26, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Enough snow now to make the ground a blank page for the calligraphy of weeds and the meandering tracks of birds, the prints of their wings.