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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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eastern wood pewee

September 12, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Sun in the treetops, joined by jays in noisy, acorn-gathering joy. A pewee bends a note. The distant grind of the quarry.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags blue jays, eastern wood pewee, quarry
September 12, 2025August 20, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Rain starts at sunrise and tapers off a half hour later. In its wake: phoebe, pewee, goldfinch, Carolina wren. A cedar waxwing’s whistle.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, Carolina wren, cedar waxwing, eastern wood pewee, phoebe, rain, sunrise
August 29, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Overcast and quiet, save for the occasional wood pewee. The bird-sound app flags a barred owl in my stomach.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags eastern wood pewee
August 15, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Cool and still, with sunlight at half strength due to atmospheric haze—smoke from Canada’s burning forests. A wood pewee’s bluesy melisma.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, eastern wood pewee, smoke
September 12, 2025June 20, 2024 by Dave Bonta

A cool beginning to another hot day. The chipping sparrow’s dry rattle. Phoebe and wood-pewee from either side of the woods’ edge like the citizens of neighboring countries comparing accents.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chipping sparrow, eastern wood pewee, phoebe
June 6, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Low clouds trailing drizzle settle into the trees, where a wood thrush and a wood pewee are calling. From the wet meadow, an indigo bunting’s bone-dry song.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, eastern wood pewee, indigo bunting, rain, wood thrush
September 12, 2025August 24, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Overcast and cool. A phoebe calls a few times from beyond the spring house and falls silent. As if in mockery, a pewee’s slower, more lilting response.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags eastern wood pewee, phoebe
August 12, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Another brief shower as the sun almost breaks through. A wood pewee answers his own question. I count the yellowing bracken fronds in my yard.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bracken, eastern wood pewee, rain
July 21, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Fog at first light. The random percussion of rain dripping off the trees slowly joined by bird calls: pewee, towhee, song sparrow, wren…

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, eastern wood pewee, song sparrow, towhee
June 11, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Rising late, I’m in time to see the last cottontail going back under the house for a mid-morning nap. Cuckoos call in the distance. Common yellowthroat. Wood pewee.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags common yellowthroat, eastern cottontail, eastern wood pewee, yellow-billed cuckoo
September 12, 2025May 20, 2023 by Dave Bonta

The snap of a gnatcatcher’s beak behind the lilac, and just beyond, a wood pewee’s melismatic drawl. The sun glimmers briefly through a hole in the clouds.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags blue-gray gnatcatcher, eastern wood pewee, lilac
September 12, 2025July 15, 2022 by Dave Bonta

A day of high contrast between sun and shade. A wood pewee lands on the dead mullein stalk in my yard and sways back and forth.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags common mullein, eastern wood pewee
September 12, 2025June 7, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Overcast. Random knocks from an unseen woodpecker. A white-breasted nuthatch’s nervous call punctuates a wood pewee’s song.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags eastern wood pewee, white-breasted nuthatch
September 12, 2025May 14, 2022 by Dave Bonta

The rain stops and the thrush singing at the woods’ edge is joined by warblers, flycatchers, pewee, thrasher, a hummingbird’s mad courtship flight…

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags brown thrasher, eastern wood pewee, rain, ruby-throated hummingbird, wood thrush
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On This Day

  • February 8, 2025
    Heavily overcast. A vole briefly surfaces in the yard, all dark fur and blur. A screech owl trills on the ridgetop where the sun should…
  • February 8, 2024
    Dawn clouds stacked liked a ladder of blood. Chattering nuthatches. A dove’s breathy song sounds far from mournful.
  • February 8, 2023
    An hour before sunrise, the yard is flooded with moonlight for a few moments, till the rift in the clouds drifts on to uncover a…
  • February 8, 2022
    Scattered snowflakes like free-range musical notation for scattered chirps—chickadee, nuthatch. A hint of sunrise fading from the clouds.
  • February 8, 2021
    Bitter cold (-16°C) and still. The rising sun appears in a tiny gap between the trees as if this is all we’re allotted, this bristly…

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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