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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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yellow-bellied sapsucker

October 6, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Heavily overcast—what the weather app calls “light rain”—with a crow yelling in the distance and a yellow-bellied sapsucker mewing like a kitten.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, clouds, yellow-bellied sapsucker
June 15, 2022 by Dave Bonta

The sun clears the trees sooner than seems possible, and the gnatcatcher’s extreme excitement is not a good sign. A sapsucker calls.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags blue-gray gnatcatcher, yellow-bellied sapsucker
April 10, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Overcast with 100% chance of yellow: daffodils, forsythia, spicebush. A yellow-bellied sapsucker looking all tapped out.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags daffodils, forsythia, spicebush, yellow-bellied sapsucker 1 Comment

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On This Day

  • December 3, 2024
    A stray snowflake wanders down from the pink clouds, itself still white. Doves flock to the birdseed on my mother’s back porch—the silvery whistles of…
  • December 3, 2023
    Steady rain. An hour past sunrise the sky brightens a little, and the trees in their green sleeves of lichen begin to glow.
  • December 3, 2022
    Cold rain. Four chickadees in a high-speed chase around the yard pause in the lilac for a vociferous exchange of views.
  • December 3, 2021
    Clouds with blue veins and sunrise bellies. Two nuthatches trade harangues. A crow summons other crows to—I’m guessing—a fresh gut pile.
  • December 3, 2020
    Bright sun; the snow on the porch has shrunk to the railings’ shadows. That special word for wind in pines, sough: putting the ow back…

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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