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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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song sparrow

October 6, 2010 by Dave Bonta

Sparrows and finches chitter in the half-light. A song sparrow sings beside the springhouse, a sound I haven’t heard here in over a year.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags song sparrow 1 Comment
March 21, 2010 by Dave Bonta

The song sparrow sings at first light—just once, like an alarm going off. Then nothing but the creek’s quiet conversation for 20 minutes.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags song sparrow, stream
March 10, 2010 by Dave Bonta

A wedge of geese, high against the clouds, headed due north: migrants. The first song sparrow of the year breaks into his trademark song.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Canada geese, song sparrow 1 Comment
October 2, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Cold drizzle. The burble of a song sparrow. A flycatcher of indeterminate species flutters up from the foxtail millet beside the stream.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flycatcher, foxtail millet, song sparrow, stream
February 26, 2009 by Dave Bonta

I keep hearing fragments of song—winter wren, bluebird, song sparrow—and the usual tight flock of siskins in a walnut tree going zzzzzzip.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, pine siskin, song sparrow, winter wren
October 3, 2008 by Dave Bonta

A song sparrow sings, and suddenly it’s spring again. In the front garden, under browning leaves, the witch hazel dangles spidery blooms.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags garden, song sparrow, witch hazel
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On This Day

  • December 2, 2024
    Overcast and cold. Ten minutes before sunrise, a yellow rent appears in the clouds. In the distance, the neighbor’s chickens start up a racket.
  • December 2, 2023
    Fog hides the sunrise, apart from a small opening on the ridgetop that fills with golden light. Then the gray curtain comes down again.
  • December 2, 2022
    The frosted meadow glitters in the sun. A scrabbling of squirrel claws on bark. Off to the south, a raven croaks; to the north, crows.
  • December 2, 2021
    It’s damp and warmish. A red-bellied woodpecker comes silently rocketing out of the woods. The creek remains mum about last night’s rain.
  • December 2, 2020
    Raw and wintry, with snow on the ground and an iron wind. I muse on the convergent evolution of “December” and “dismember”.

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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