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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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redstart

May 12, 2019 by Dave Bonta

A flock of warblers at the woods’ edge in the pouring rain: flashes of redstart, cerulean, black-and-white. A singing black-throated green.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black-and-white warbler, black-throated green warbler, cerulean warbler, redstart
May 23, 2010 by Dave Bonta

Light rain. A female towhee carries load after load of dead grass into a rosebush while a yearling male redstart sings and noshes in the treetops.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags redstart, towhee

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On This Day

  • April 23, 2025
    A smear of sun, strong enough to cast thin shadows. Four white-throated sparrows trade variations of the same song like old-time fiddlers, trying slightly different…
  • April 23, 2024
    The sun climbs from clarity into murk. Feeling insufficiently caffeinated, I watch the tulip tree’s tall, green torch fade to chartreuse.
  • April 23, 2023
    Cool and damp at sunrise. A small cottontail grazes at the woods’ edge: a salad of tiny leaves. A gnatcatcher’s soft soliloquy.
  • April 23, 2022
    A 30-second rain. I count nine shades of green, all circled by a cardinal in his flame-colored cap. The daffodils once again stand erect.
  • April 23, 2021
    Bright sun. High in the tulip tree, among the shining leaf nubbins, two robins meet for combat and tumble to the ground.

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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