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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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woodcock

April 1, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Rain and fog linger from a pre-dawn thunderstorm as the sky brightens. The nasal calls of woodcocks mingle with a torrent of robin song.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American robin, dawn, fog, rain, woodcock
March 23, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Fog and scattered showers. The last few woodcock peents overlap with phoebes—two of them already, trying to out-sing each other.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, phoebe, rain, sunrise, woodcock
March 16, 2016March 15, 2016 by Dave Bonta

At first light, off in the fog, the weird, nasal calls of timberdoodles. One launches into the air with a whistling of wings.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, killdeer, woodcock
March 30, 2015 by Dave Bonta

Cold with low rain clouds at dawn. Over the noise from I-99, the nasal mating calls of that shoreless shorebird, the American woodcock.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, woodcock

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On This Day

  • December 22, 2024
    Very cold and still. Over by the springhouse, juncos are making their happy sounds. A mourning dove moans.
  • December 22, 2023
    Half an hour till sunrise. The sky’s gray matter is deeply furrowed. The caroling of a Carolina wren briefly dispels the gloom.
  • December 22, 2021
    Patches of blue sky; occasional snowflakes. What appears to be a butterfly fluttering through the treetops must be a dead leaf.
  • December 22, 2020
    After a night of light rain, the snowpack has shrunk, revealing a microtopography of logs, pits and mounds—bones under the skin of an elder.
  • December 22, 2019
    Bright sun with a bit of warmth, but the trees’ long shadows give shelter to the snow. A squirrel leaps headlong through the treetops.

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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All works on this site by Dave Bonta are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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