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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

  • May 2, 2025
    Overcast and damp, with the intense green of new leaves everywhere. Two doves moan in different keys. A squirrel carrying a walnut walks down the…
  • May 2, 2024
    A warm breeze at sunrise. My reading is interrupted by an unfamiliar trill: a redheaded woodpecker in the dead crown of the tallest black locust.…
  • May 2, 2023
    A hair above freezing with rain tapering off. Two skinny deer, still in their gray-brown winter pelts, pick their way through the sodden vegetation.
  • May 2, 2022
    Sun through thinning fog—prismatic beads of water twinkling from every twig like the souls of dead leaves. It feels almost masochistic to turn my eyes…
  • May 2, 2021
    Like green tassels on Victorian lampshades the birch catkins fluttering in the breeze. It’s warm—a perfect day for tree sex.

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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