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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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red-bellied woodpecker

November 18, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A red-bellied woodpecker’s head going up and down at the top of a tall locust, squeaking like a red marker on the whiteboard sky.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags red-bellied woodpecker
August 17, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Dawn fog lifts and pauses, so it’s clear to a height of ten feet, then white, then the crescent moon. A red-bellied woodpecker’s slow chant.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, moon, red-bellied woodpecker
May 24, 2009 by Dave Bonta

For an hour now, the red-bellied woodpecker has been trilling almost non-stop: half yell, half peal. Fleabane blooms beside the sidewalk.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags red-bellied woodpecker
February 22, 2009 by Dave Bonta

White sky. The soft calls of a pair of downy woodpeckers on adjacent trees. Four chickadees on a high-speed chase tear through the lilac.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chickadee, downy woodpecker, lilac, red-bellied woodpecker
March 23, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Easter Sunday dawns clear and cold. The yard is stippled with fresh tracks. Quiet except for a mourning dove and a red-bellied woodpecker.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags mourning doves, red-bellied woodpecker
February 22, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Siren, train whistle, a red-bellied woodpecker ululating in the yard. It’s snowing. Squirrel tracks cross the porch in front of my chair.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, red-bellied woodpecker, train
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On This Day

  • December 3, 2024
    A stray snowflake wanders down from the pink clouds, itself still white. Doves flock to the birdseed on my mother’s back porch—the silvery whistles of…
  • December 3, 2023
    Steady rain. An hour past sunrise the sky brightens a little, and the trees in their green sleeves of lichen begin to glow.
  • December 3, 2022
    Cold rain. Four chickadees in a high-speed chase around the yard pause in the lilac for a vociferous exchange of views.
  • December 3, 2021
    Clouds with blue veins and sunrise bellies. Two nuthatches trade harangues. A crow summons other crows to—I’m guessing—a fresh gut pile.
  • December 3, 2020
    Bright sun; the snow on the porch has shrunk to the railings’ shadows. That special word for wind in pines, sough: putting the ow back…

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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