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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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least flycatcher

May 19, 2021 by Dave Bonta

A nocturnal visitor has dug up four of my herbs, tunneling into the compost. Below the porch, a least flycatcher, handsome in his eye rings.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags garden, least flycatcher
May 5, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Agog at the intense green of a deciduous forest at leaf-out in the rain. The soundtrack: wood thrush, red-eyed vireo, least flycatcher.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags least flycatcher, rain, red-eyed vireo, wood thrush
May 24, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Overcast and damp. My mother stops by to point out the highly unexceptional call of the aptly named least flycatcher.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags least flycatcher
September 6, 2017 by Dave Bonta

I cede the porch to the hornets and sit under the portico. The view: a garden full of weeds, a least flycatcher landing briefly on an aster.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags asters, bald-faced hornet, least flycatcher

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On This Day

  • November 14, 2025
    Frosty and still at dawn. A hunter’s flashlight ascends a ridgetop tree and goes out, subsumed by the crescent moon’s open parenthesis.
  • November 14, 2024
    Heavily overcast without a breath of wind—classic November weather. A small carnival of goldfinches moves through the treetops on squeaky wheels.
  • November 14, 2023
    Sunrise hidden by a layer of cloud. A white-footed mouse explores the corrugated roof over my oil tanks, its likely sickness shown by its lack of fear.
  • November 14, 2022
    Heavy cloud cover. A gray squirrel chiseling open a walnut squats on a low branch with its tail curled over its head for warmth.
  • November 14, 2021
    A blank gray sky, this time of year, is the easiest kind to read: snow, it says, in a slowly accelerating tumble of pure punctuation.

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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