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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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ruby-throated hummingbird

May 4, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Sun! A female hummingbird alights on a twig and a male begins rocketing back and forth in front of her. A cuckoo calls from the powerline.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ruby-throated hummingbird, yellow-billed cuckoo
June 26, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Five hummingbirds briefly orbit the feeder before taking off after each other. A gnatcatcher bombs the driveway with a nestling’s fecal sac.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags blue-gray gnatcatcher, ruby-throated hummingbird
June 10, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Humidity thick as wool. Above the buzz of hummingbird dogfights, a distant roar of military jets, hopefully just on training runs.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jet, ruby-throated hummingbird 1 Comment
June 10, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Humidity thick as wool. Above the buzz of hummingbird dogfights, a distant roar of military jets, hopefully just on training runs.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jet, ruby-throated hummingbird
May 30, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Hummingbirds fight each other; a towhee fights his reflection in the living room window. The sky is as blue and empty as it gets.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ruby-throated hummingbird, towhee 1 Comment
May 28, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Misty rain. After drinking from the feeder, a hummingbird sips water from the ant guard as if to cleanse her palate.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags rain, ruby-throated hummingbird
May 19, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Sunny and warm. Behind the screen of green leaves, a vulture’s lazy drift. A hummingbird collides with a carpenter bee over the yard.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags carpenter bees, ruby-throated hummingbird, turkey vultures
May 18, 2020 by Dave Bonta

A field sparrow fresh from bathing and a hummingbird fresh from fighting sit two feet apart on a walnut branch, shaking their feathers.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, field sparrow, ruby-throated hummingbird
May 13, 2020 by Dave Bonta

An earth-shaking blast from the quarry, preceded by a muffled boom as if by its own echo. I catch a glimpse of a hummingbird’s long tongue.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags quarry, ruby-throated hummingbird 2 Comments
May 12, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Through the warm sun and the cold wind, hummingbirds come and go. I squint at the trees, trying to tell if the leaves are any bigger today.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ruby-throated hummingbird
May 10, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Sunny and warmer. The hummingbirds have survived yesterday’s freeze, and their tiny motors roar as they chase and do courtship displays.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ruby-throated hummingbird
May 4, 2020 by Dave Bonta

The sun goes in and it’s cold. But a hummingbird still comes to the flying saucer-shaped feeder, in which rock the bodies of drowned ants.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ants, ruby-throated hummingbird
May 2, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Sunny and almost warm. A male hummingbird comes in to the feeder, after first examining the empty hook where another feeder hung last year.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ruby-throated hummingbird
May 11, 2019 by Dave Bonta

Mingling with bird calls, the distant, excited cries of small children. The woods glow green. A hummingbird buzzes in to the bleeding-heart.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bleeding-heart, ruby-throated hummingbird
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On This Day

  • September 27, 2025
    Overcast but not gloomy. Above the usual yammering of a red-bellied woodpecker, I catch a few phrases of warbler buzz: cerulean, I think.
  • September 27, 2024
    Fog that lasts for hours, blurring the lines between night and day, and between sky and ground for night-flying migrants now foraging all along the woods’ edge—a cloud full of food.
  • September 27, 2023
    An hour past sunrise and the sky is brightening. A red-bellied woodpecker makes anxious chirps, prompting a flicker to respond. A tree drops a dead limb into last year’s leaves.
  • September 27, 2022
    Rising late to find the sun already in the trees and the air redolent of autumn. Silhouettes of birds pass as quietly as thoughts through the canopy.
  • September 27, 2021
    My first day on earth without a father. It takes me ten minutes to notice the sky—cloudless blue. The laboring engine of a distant plane.

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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