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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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American goldfinch

August 20, 2013 by Dave Bonta

It’s humid; everything drips. Goldfinches warble in the treetops. A rabbit’s ear twitches, illuminated by the rising sun.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, cottontail 2 Comments
June 2, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Rainy and cool. A pair of goldfinches spiral up from the meadow, twittering. I find a dead ant in my last mouthful of coffee.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, ants, rain
May 3, 2013 by Dave Bonta

In a soft light filtered by high clouds, trees framed by a fog of new leaves. After each burst of wren song, the goldfinch commentaries.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, budburst, Carolina wren
April 27, 2013 by Dave Bonta

From the greening-up lilac and the blooming forsythia, a steady chatter of goldfinches, their own plumage now turned from green to yellow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, forsythia, lilac
November 29, 2012 by Dave Bonta

The sun rising through the trees off to the southeast seems so much less ambitious than last night’s moon. Goldfinches’ desultory chirps.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, sunrise
August 29, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Around the side of the house, a male goldfinch gorges on spicebush berries—silent for once, as if unwilling to share his find.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, spicebush
August 12, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Even hanging upside-down from a Canada thistle and stuffing her beak with thistledown, the goldfinch never stops chittering.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, Canada thistle 1 Comment
July 15, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Ten percent of the tulip tree’s leaves have turned yellow in response to the drought. Goldfinches pass through like a yellow wind.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, drought, tulip tree 1 Comment
April 14, 2012April 14, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Half molted now, a patchwork of yellow and green, the goldfinch goes twittering past the crabapple’s half-open blooms.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, crabapple
March 8, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Warmth without shadows, the gossip of goldfinches like a single bright thread. The rabbit doesn’t chance a dash across the yard.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, cottontail 3 Comments
December 4, 2011 by Dave Bonta

The sound of an altercation among the goldfinches—like a dozen jazz soloists playing at once. The only cloud in the sky finds the sun.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch 2 Comments
November 22, 2011 by Dave Bonta

Fog. High in a skeletal birch, the silhouettes of ten goldfinches are almost the right size for leaves, moving in their own slow wind.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, black birch, fog 3 Comments
August 17, 2011 by Dave Bonta

A male and female goldfinch glean seeds from a tall bull thistle. She eats in silence while he in his loud yellow suit chatters on and on.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, bull thistle 3 Comments
July 10, 2011 by Dave Bonta

Goldfinches twitter in the tops of the locusts at sunrise, bright as beacons. A yellow hoverfly watches me from four inches away.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, sunrise, syrphid fly 2 Comments
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On This Day

  • April 9, 2025
    Below freezing still, and the sky more clear than not. Up on the ridge, a hermit thrush is singing: faint chimes, as if some gate…
  • April 9, 2024
    In the half-light, a Louisiana waterthrush’s jumble of notes. The sky is nearly clear. Peonies are raising red hands out of the earth.
  • April 9, 2023
    Clear and cold with the deep quiet that only a major holiday can bring. A distant train. A Carolina wren’s sleepy start to the dawn…
  • April 9, 2022
    A hint of yellow in the east soon fades to gloom. It’s one degree above freezing. Tiny silhouettes in the crown of a black birch—kinglets?
  • April 9, 2021
    Late morning; a pause in the rain. Arboreal lichens glow blue-green under a low cloud ceiling.

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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