The Morning Porch

Dave Bonta — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 11:09:34 +0000

A screech owl trilling in the half-dark sounds thinner and more uncertain than usual—a juvenile, perhaps? When it falls silent, a whippoorwill calls, sounding equally tentative, and soon stops. From the woods’ edge, the soft calls of all-night migrants dropping in to rest and forage.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:39:34 +0000

Sun glistening in the treetops. Down-hollow, a pileated woodpecker drums on a baritone snag. The first bumblebee visits the jewelweed, no crickets to muffle the hum of her solitary motor.

Dave Bonta — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 10:47:59 +0000

The streak of a meteor below the crescent moon doesn’t reach the thin ground fog. I watch the stars fade until only Rigel remains—Orion’s left foot. It slips from view fifteen minutes before sunrise. A minute later, the first mosquito whines in my ear.

Dave Bonta — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:51:55 +0000

A white sky at mid-morning beginning to glow as the clouds thin, while below in the meadow the white snakeroot is beginning to bloom. I find a dogwood sawfly larva from a later instar than yesterday’s fluffy white grubs; this is a proper green caterpillar crawling across my shirt.

Dave Bonta — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:33:13 +0000

Overcast and cool. When I tire of feeding myself to the mosquitoes, I don a bug hat and go into the yard with my phone to identify whatever has been skeletonizing trees and shrubs: angle-lined prominent moth caterpillars on the bigtooth aspen, pinstriped in green but too hairy to be extra twigs, and dogwood sawfly ... Read more

Dave Bonta — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:25:45 +0000

Daybreak comes in a lull between storms. An orange leaf spirals down at the woods’ edge as thunder rumbles off to the east, and now again in the west. A green stink bug crawls under the arm of my green chair.

Dave Bonta — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:21:00 +0000

Everything drips from rain in the wee hours. I notice that the white lilac at the woods’ edge is blooming again, and more vigorously then it did in the spring, before months of assault from whatever disease has been decimating its leaves. There’s an almost ghostly presence to these new white inflorescences, appearing alongside a ... Read more

Dave Bonta — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:32:01 +0000

Humid, overcast and warm. Half-way between the crickets in the grass and the cicadas in the treetops, the Carolina wren’s teakettle teakettle teakettle lets off steam.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 13:00:36 +0000

At least half the leaves on the walnut trees in my yard have turned yellow now, still glistening from a shower at dawn. The red-eyed vireo who was calling then is still going strong three hours later.

Dave Bonta — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 11:55:30 +0000

Overcast and cool. A sudden thumping under the floor, and a small groundhog goes running out into the garden, followed by the head of a larger groundhog, who turns to look at me over the end of the porch. After a minute-long staring contest, she drops out of sight.

Dave Bonta — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:05:02 +0000

Moonlit dawn. A screech owl quavers, prompting a barred owl to hoot. As light builds in the east, a whippoorwill begins to shriek.

Dave Bonta — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 11:49:34 +0000

Sun in the treetops. A doe emerges from the woods to browse the road bank, followed by her two grown fawns already in their unspotted, gray-brown winter coats. Head up, her ears swivel toward a distant crow.

Dave Bonta — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:31:13 +0000

Soft sunlight and the scent of autumn leaf-mould. Two female hummingbirds visit the jewelweed together and leave together, but seem quite competitive around the flowers: a mother trying to distance herself from a fledged offspring, I suppose.

Dave Bonta — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:34:48 +0000

Cloudless and cool. The cicadas start up before it even reaches 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Sunlight pools at the entrance to the trail into the woods. Half the bracken fronds in the yard have turned bronze.

Dave Bonta — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:10:56 +0000

An autumnal morning, heavily overcast and cool. The continuous trill of tree crickets counterbalances the stream’s trickle: two kinds of traffic. A pileated woodpecker cackles.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 10:42:14 +0000

An hour before sunrise, the clouds part to reveal the Pleiades above the ridge, as well as the V-shape that ancient Babylonians saw as a bull’s head—clearly a cosmic rat. A distant whine of tires as the first commuters take to the road.

Dave Bonta — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 13:11:50 +0000

Again I am the object of a hummingbird’s intense study from three feet away, this time for nearly a minute. Then she’s off to the back of the house and the banks of orange jewelweed there.

Dave Bonta — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 13:38:33 +0000

Cool and mostly clear. A raven croaks loudly from the vicinty of the powerline, just after the bird app tells me American Crow is my Bird of the Day. The smell of woodsmoke. A dog-day cicada starts up.

Dave Bonta — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 11:51:59 +0000

Foggy and cool, the spring still loud with yesterday’s rain. A murmur of voices from the other house—a radio tuned to the news. Somewhere up in the woods, a tree crashes down.

Dave Bonta — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:18:20 +0000

A soft shimmer of rain at dawn, increasing as the light grows. By sunrise it’s drowning out the wren’s song. A mosquito sings in my ear.

Dave Bonta — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:40:14 +0000

Cool and clear. Sunlight pours through a hole in the forest canopy into the crown of a black walnut tree, erasing the difference between green and yellow leaves. A mourning dove calls from the woods’ edge—not the full song, just a kind of two-syllable Wow.

Dave Bonta — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:02:31 +0000

A rare low-humidity morning begins with crows heralding the sunrise and a screech owl trilling in the distance. Yellow clouds fade to white. A bluebird begins warbling as I open my laptop.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:28:45 +0000

An hour past sunrise, one last, brief shower before it clears—or so I hope. A deer walks out of the woods and up the driveway, followed by a fawn whose spots are just beginning to fade.

Dave Bonta — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 10:52:05 +0000

Heavily overcast at sunrise. A screech owl trills up on the ridge, answered by a trill from down along the road. Moments later, the first patter of rain.

Dave Bonta — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:53:04 +0000

Cool and clear, with bluebird and cardinal song. The leaves of the tulip tree sapling in my yard are nearly white with dew. I grease my boots.

Dave Bonta — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:32:31 +0000

Long-sleeve weather at sunrise. A female hummingbird hovers in front of me, then on either side, as if trying to recall where she knows me from.

Dave Bonta — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:05:48 +0000

Cool and breezy, with everything damp from another rainy night. An indigo bunting sings a few bars and falls silent. An jewelweed stalk still sways from a hummingbird’s visit.

Dave Bonta — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:17:11 +0000

Breezy and cool. The sun glimmers through thin clouds, prompting a Linne’s cicada to call—that stuttering buzz. A bluebird sings up by the shed.

Dave Bonta — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:18:06 +0000

Up late after being woken by a storm in the night. At mid-morning, the sun breaking through thin clouds, everything drips and glistens. A low thrum of crickets. The catbird scolds from the depths of a spicebush.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 10:26:28 +0000

Dawn thunderstorm moving off by sunrise, which a single crow heralds from the dead top of a locust. The first hummingbird arrives at the jewelweed before the rain has quite stopped. Another storm rumbles in the west.