The Morning Porch

Dave Bonta — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 13:23:43 +0000

With my hearing back after a day of earwax removal, I listen to white-throated sparrows singing in two different keys, the sun’s silent wheel progressing alone on its wide blue road.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 12:03:13 +0000

Cold and clear with heavy frost. A small hawk hurtles over the house as crows call in the distance. The western ridge turns brick-red with sunrise.

Dave Bonta — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 13:01:10 +0000

Clear and still, the yard silvery with frost. Each morning the woods are more open, the patches of sky more numerous. The sun-flooded forest of winter doesn’t seem so far away now.

Dave Bonta — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:20:56 +0000

Overcast and cold. A white-throated sparrow sings in the wind. Kinglets forage, fluttering and wheezing, through the golden crown of a black birch.

Dave Bonta — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 13:16:43 +0000

Yellow leaves falling in the fog. A chipmunk runs onto the porch, sees me and stops short, with a walnut larger than its head between its teeth.

Dave Bonta — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 14:06:38 +0000

The rising sun appears through new holes in the forest understory just after it tops the ridge. Crows and jays are in an uproar over a young peregrine falcon, who hangs around for a couple of hours, periodically giving chase to its most obnoxious persecutors until they all find better things to do elsewhere.

Dave Bonta — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 12:41:06 +0000

Warm and breezy at sunrise. One katydid is still calling, as if reluctant to see the end of what could be the katydids’ last big party night of the year. Two yellow walnut leaves land on my laptop.

Dave Bonta — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 13:32:45 +0000

Soft sunlight through high atmospheric haze. Dew drips from the roof. The forest glows orange and yellow as spring peepers call from the leaf litter.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:19:02 +0000

Blue holes open and close in the clouds. Gray squirrels continue to sound the alarm for a long-gone hawk as the tulip sapling in my yard dances in the wind.

Dave Bonta — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 11:34:09 +0000

Hard, steady rain since the wee hours, but the crows still show up to yell from the top of the tallest tree at what would be sunrise.

Dave Bonta — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 13:43:48 +0000

Sun through thin clouds at mid-morning. A suppressed burble of wren-song from the woods’ edge. Yellow leaves festoon the reddening stiltgrass in the yard.

Dave Bonta — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 13:30:22 +0000

Clear but not as cold. The shadows of three silent, low-flying geese cross the porch as a larger flock to the south provides the soundtrack of goose music.

Dave Bonta — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 13:26:09 +0000

Clear, cold, and loud with highway noise due to an inversion layer. Dead-center in my view from the porch, I spot a mile-a-minute vine in the lilac that I somehow missed and walk down to rip it out, blue berries spilling into the weeds.

Dave Bonta — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:05:53 +0000

The coldest morning of the autumn so far, but no frost. Pileated woodpeckers yammer in the distance as the sun climbs through golden leaves toward the moon’s thin grin.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:45:21 +0000

More clouds than sun, with walnut trees undressing in the wind, and the leaves on the porch turning over like restless sleepers. The periodic bang of a walnut landing on the back roof is loud as a gunshot.

Dave Bonta — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 11:24:22 +0000

Overcast at dawn. A great-horned owl calls in the distance. A train horn at the Plummer Hollow crossing blows a major-key chord with a passing resemblance to the old Windows start-up music.

Dave Bonta — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:07:57 +0000

Cold and clear before dawn. I lean forward to tie my boots in the light of the half moon, then sit back in deep shadow. A barred owl calls once, twice. Orion lies on his side above the ridge—a hunter half out of bed on this, the opening day of deer season.

Dave Bonta — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:38:04 +0000

Breezy and warmish with a few thin, high clouds. A fly walks slowly across the open document on my laptop. From up in the woods, the plaintive call of a spring peeper already attuning himself for next spring, as his body prepares for months of dormancy under the leaf duff.

Dave Bonta — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:43:47 +0000

Heavily overcast skies prolong the lingering darkness till well past sunrise, but eventually the duetting screech owls and the all-night migrants softly calling from the woods’ edge fall silent, the crows disperse, and the wren, one imagines, must be off busying himself with matters of great import.

Dave Bonta — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 13:49:39 +0000

Sunny and still at mid-morning, with backlit leaves at the woods’ edge looking even yellower than they are. The throb of a distant engine. Squirrel teeth chiseling open a walnut. A common yellowthroat pipes up.

Dave Bonta — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 13:12:24 +0000

Overcast and still. A gray squirrel stashes a husked walnut five feet off the ground in the crotch of a lilac stem—the first I’ve actually seen one do this, though I’ve noticed walnuts stashed in shrubs and assumed it was the work of squirrels. Or perhaps just this particular squirrel, unconvinced of the need for ... Read more

Dave Bonta — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 13:20:41 +0000

Overcast and still. The bracken in the yard has all turned brown and the stillgrass is reddening, revealing the dark green leaves of a new volunteer spicebush.

Dave Bonta — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 13:38:48 +0000

Breezy and cool, with occasional outbreaks of sunshine. It takes me two hours to work out that the soft clucking sound I’d thought was a hen turkey is actually a branch rubbing against the gutter for the back roof. A chipmunk rummages under my chair, then scuttles back under the small woodpile next to me.

Dave Bonta — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 14:06:51 +0000

Cool and mostly clear, with a wind that keeps the shadows in motion—and the blue jays, too. Each hard gust brings another few acorns rattling down, and the driveway is filling in with walnuts.

Dave Bonta — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 13:47:12 +0000

Clear and cold. The high-pitched kik-kik-kik of a sharp-shinned hawk elicits a chirr from a red squirrel and a furous denunciation from a crow at the compost pit.

Dave Bonta — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 12:21:08 +0000

Clear and cold, with an inversion layer bringing quarry and highway sounds out of the east. A female Carolina wren ticks quietly from the thick shrubbery around the springhouse. Cold as I am, I luxuriate in the absense of mosquitoes.

Dave Bonta — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 13:05:57 +0000

Breezy and cold, with the last few clouds moving off by 9:00: a morning for blue jays and the random marimba-sound of acorns dropping onto rocks and logs.

Dave Bonta — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 13:56:57 +0000

Drizzle thinning into wind-blown mist by mid-morning. The sky brightens. A pileated woodpecker clings to a skinny locust tree as it sways in the breeze, taps a few times and then tilts her head to the side as if listening for a response.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:21:52 +0000

A gloomy morning, except for the wren: the dull mechanical songs of the quarry, the low cloud ceiling, the cold breath of autumn making leaves tremble on their stems.

Dave Bonta — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 13:29:43 +0000

Off and on rain and the sporadic crashes of falling walnuts. I watch a yellow tulip tree leaf tumbling down, end over end, the air slipping through its four Mickey Mouse fingers.