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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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raven

November 23, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Gray morning with raven: that gutteral, wild cry so inadequately rendered in birders’ onomatopoeia as Bonk, bonk.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags raven
July 26, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The jesters’ caps on the topheading garlic have begun to split, revealing dense clusters of miniature selves. A raven’s mechanical laughter.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags raven, springhouse
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.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, deer, fog, raven, scarlet tanager
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.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, raven, starling
November 12, 2012November 12, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Two white-tailed deer leap through the dried goldenrod and asters beyond the springhouse, surfacing, diving—dolphins in a brown sea.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags asters, deer, goldenrod, raven, springhouse
September 23, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Another gray morning. High against the clouds, a pair of ravens exchange triple croaks. The chipmunk in the garden scratches behind one ear.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chipmunks, garden, raven
December 10, 2007 by Dave Bonta

The cooing turned out to be a raven—later on, it was barking like a dog. Rifle season is over, and the mountain is littered with gut piles.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags raven
November 28, 2007 by Dave Bonta

To see the sunrise, I have to walk to the edge of the porch and look west: red ridge, the gibbous moon high overhead, a pair of ravens.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags raven, sunrise
November 12, 2007 by Dave Bonta

A pair of ravens fly low over the house, invisible in the fog. I’m lost in thought about trickster gods, and right on cue: Arrk! Arrk! Arrk!

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, raven
November 9, 2007 by Dave Bonta

A doe trailed by a scrawny 5-point buck. The soundtrack includes a train, a raven, geese, a wren, and a low-flying plane with a wide eraser.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Canada geese, Carolina wren, deer, plane, raven, train
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On This Day

  • February 8, 2025
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  • February 8, 2022
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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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