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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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rose-breasted grosbeak

May 9, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Cool and increasingly cloudy as the sun clears the treetops—a bright spot in the gray. A rose-breasted grosbeak sings. Chipmunk metronomes go in and out of sync.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chipmunks, clouds, rose-breasted grosbeak
May 1, 2022 by Dave Bonta

After insomnia, watching the rain come in and whatever brightness the morning might’ve had dwindling to just rose-breasted grosbeak song.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags rain, rose-breasted grosbeak
April 29, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Sun through a thin milk of clouds. A lull in birdsong, punctuated by a didactic ovenbird and the rose-breasted grosbeak’s brilliant warble.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, ovenbird, rose-breasted grosbeak
May 30, 2010 by Dave Bonta

A rose-breasted grosbeak flutters up from the creek singing clear, cool notes. A cranefly drifts through a sunbeam, carrying its legs.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cranefly, rose-breasted grosbeak, stream

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On This Day

  • August 16, 2025
    In the wake of a quick hummingbird with her elegant wand, a bumblebee continues to work the jewelweed, clambering up into each orange throat.
  • August 16, 2024
    The sun in fragments through the trees behind the old dead maple, which has a distinctly joyous appearance now that it’s shed its top half.
  • August 16, 2023
    A mosquito rests on the arm of my Adirondack chair, watching the sunrise. A hummingbird surprised by a sudden movement buzzes toward me rather than away.
  • August 16, 2021
    Cloudy with 100% chance of migrating warblers: the yard is briefly possessed. I hear a noise, turn my head and meet a rabbit’s critical gaze.
  • August 16, 2016
    Two cabbage whites engage in a dogfight, or possibly a pas de deux. A leaf detaches itself from a lilac branch and turns into a hummingbird.

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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