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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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raven

October 12, 2015 by Dave Bonta

Another cool and cloudless morning. The hollow echoes with the croaks of ravens. A pileated woodpecker taps on the side of my house.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags pileated woodpecker, raven
September 24, 2015 by Dave Bonta

Another cloudless morning. Chipmunks chase each other through a bar of sunlight on the forest floor. The distant, metallic calls of a raven.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chipmunks, raven
September 19, 2015 by Dave Bonta

Even unseen, the raven crying rawk rawk from high overhead makes the flat white sky more interesting. In the yard, a monarch’s regal orange.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags monarch butterfly, raven
March 3, 2015 by Dave Bonta

I come out to find my chair at the end of the porch and turned to the north. A jay is doing his best to reply to a raven’s imperious croaks.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags blue jays, raven, wind
February 6, 2015 by Dave Bonta

The only tracks on the road are mine, and the only clouds are right where the sun is. I hear heavy wingbeats followed by a raven’s croak.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, raven, snow 1 Comment
January 16, 2015 by Dave Bonta

A raven croaks somewhere above the ridge. Snow fine as flour. A Brownian cloud of small birds scuds over the treetops: pine siskins.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags pine siskin, raven, snow, snowflakes 1 Comment
December 26, 2014 by Dave Bonta

The sky is clearing, the low-angled, mid-morning sun illuminating the woods for minutes at a time. Finches in the birches. A distant raven.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, black birch, raven
December 21, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Jays, crows, and a raven: the solstice soundtrack. When I open my laptop, a red bead of a ladybug is huddled among the black keys.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, blue jays, ladybugs, raven, solstice 1 Comment
November 2, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Windy and overcast, with a few flakes of snow in the air. Yellow leaves peel off the aspens as I watch. Two ravens croak back and forth.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags quaking aspen, raven, snowflakes, wind
April 29, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Two ravens in the rain. One flies off to the south and the other lands on a dead branch. It breaks, and the bird flies off to the north.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags rain, raven
April 19, 2014 by Dave Bonta

A red-tailed hawk spirals high on a thermal over the powerline. When I stand up, a raven takes off behind the house—the noise of its wings.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags powerline, raven, red-tailed hawk
April 6, 2014 by Dave Bonta

A cool, cloudless morning. A raven flies over the house headed south, his loud cronks shattering the Sunday silence. Today will be warm.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags raven
February 25, 2014 by Dave Bonta

The nasal alarm calls of nuthatches, one to the south and one to the north. The sun is a yellow stain on a white tablecloth. A silent raven.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags raven, white-breasted nuthatch 1 Comment
January 8, 2014 by Dave Bonta

A flat white sky; no wind. A pair of ravens fly low over the house, their croaks echoing off the ridge. The wrens chitter back and forth.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, raven 2 Comments
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On This Day

  • April 3, 2025
    Hard rain slackening after sunrise. As the drumming on the roofs subsides, I can hear a torrent of Carolina wren song and towhee calls.
  • April 3, 2024
    In the pre-dawn darkness, nothing but the sounds of rain and water. A low rumbling comes from the hole in my yard that leads down…
  • April 3, 2022
    An unexpected glimpse of sun sets the swelling lilac buds aglow. I see the first few daffodils are trying on the new spring fashions.
  • April 3, 2021
    Cooper’s hawks calling up on the ridge. One of them takes flight: such a small bird to be so strident! And the sky begins to…
  • April 3, 2020
    Sun silvering black birch twigs. From the woods beyond, the call of a Cooper’s hawk. It can’t be long till the first shadbush blooms.

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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