1/12/2019

Dave Bonta January 12, 2019

As bright as the sun seems, shining through thin cloud, there are almost no shadows. A song sparrow sits in a spicebush, looking all around.

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1/12/2019

August 27, 2023
Crystal-clear and still. At first light, the soft calls of wood thrushes, no doubt tired and hungry after their all-night flights. Pale crowds of snakeroot…
1/12/2019

August 27, 2022
Under a clearing sky, nuthatch and vireo still claim and declaim. A black cherry tree, having dispensed its fruit, is turning a dull orange.
1/12/2019

August 27, 2021
Fog. A quiet gurgle from the stream, still digesting last night’s downpour. The only other song belongs to a vireo.
1/12/2019

August 27, 2016
Cool with a scrim of cloud. From high in the canopy, a scarlet tanager’s hoarse song—the first in weeks. A sudden sweet smell I can’t…
1/12/2019

August 27, 2015
Two compound leaves atop a walnut branch feint and dodge like boxing lobsters in the wind. A syrphid fly makes a close inspection of my…
1/12/2019

August 27, 2014
Light from the rising sun diffracts off a spider web in the eaves, turning it all the colors of the rainbow as it trembles in…
1/12/2019

August 27, 2013
A hornet nuzzles my arm like a hoverfly but doesn’t sting. In the garden, the buzz of hummingbirds dueling over scraps of bloom.
1/12/2019

August 27, 2012
A pileated woodpecker comes cackling into the dead elm, then quietly gets to work: hop down the trunk a few inches, listen for ants, repeat.
1/12/2019

August 27, 2011
A downy woodpecker lands on the dead elm, his black-and-white feathers against the barkless trunk as startling and dramatic as a totem pole.
1/12/2019

August 27, 2010
The sound of deer running through the woods, and from over the ridge, that highway whine: we race through the deserts of our own making.

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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

1/12/2019