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Birds Quotes

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Birds Quotes

“Soft warbles echo notes that rise and drown, In the waltz of the breeze through rusty leaves, From the highest tree bough, upon its crown, Drifting regards resound with tuneful ease, As the dust of autumn sweeps on it’s vale, A mockingbird sings in the sun’s lulled glow, Ballads for time as it spins a new tale, Drama in its pose and flair in its flow, So charms the songster with hundreds of tunes; For vast spread wings behold more than their share, The countless dawns and passing many moons Have guided its flights with no sight to spare; Yet new trails await with new sights to see, Each recount sung with unflawed mimicry.”

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Author:Marie Helen Abramyan
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“Most living entities and systems on this planet obviously do not live by the Western human clock (though some, like the crows who memorize a city's daily garbage truck route, do of course adapt to the timing of human activities). To watch a brown creeper as it inches up and down, peering into crevices and extracting bugs with its little dentist beak, is thus a way of catching a ride out of the grid and toward a time sense so different that it is barely imaginable to us. In Jennifer Ackerman's book The Bird Way, I learned that the male black manakin, a South American songbird, can do somersaults so fast that a human can see them only in slowed-down video. Some birdsong contains notes that are sung too quickly or are too high-pitched for us to hear. Veeries, a species related to the American robin, can predict hurricanes months in advance and adjust their migration route accordingly, and no one currently knows how. Birds own bodies and their movements are an entanglement of time and space: If a loon is in the higher latitudes, it's summer, and the bird is mostly black with a striking pattern of white stripes. If the same loon is near my studio in Oakland, it's winter, and the bird is almost unrecognizably different, a dull grayish brown.”

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Book:Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
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“Time's Magpies by Stewart Stafford Time’s magpies swoop to taunt and rob, And pluck out hair and gums carefree. Opportunity and energy drained by mob, As we duel pitiless reality. The cat’s jowls swelled in uproar, His gut sags and snarls with pain. Feathery barbs of a matador, Feline fleeing to copse again. A younger cat enters the fight, Ousting the aged tom. Crown prince routs thieving flight, A proud lion of dawn's sun. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

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Author:Stewart Stafford
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“The hardest thing of all to see is what is really there. Books about birds show pictures of the peregrine, and the text is full of information. Large and isolated in the gleaming whiteness of the page, the hawk stares back at you, bold, statuesque, brightly coloured. But when you have shut the book, you will never see that bird again. Compared with the close and static image, the reality will seem dull and disappointing. The living bird will never be so large, so shiny-bright. It will be deep in landscape, and always sinking farther back, always at the point of being lost. Pictures are waxworks beside the passionate mobility of the living bird.”

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Book:The Peregrine
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“On a winter’s day when a person’s spirits may be low and to behold thirty to one-hundred Evening Grosbeaks busily gorging themselves on bird seed and perched in a stand of pines with all of them creating a cacophony of sparrow like chirps, this is real therapy for me. It is an act of contagious optimism. It is at such times I realize that a bird can do more for me than a shrink.”

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Book:TEACHERS IN THE FOREST: Essays from the last wilderness in Mississippi Headwaters Country
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“The birds had multiplied. She'd installed rows upon rows of floating melamine shelves above shoulder height to accommodate the expression of her once humble collection. Though she'd had bird figurines all over the apartment, the bulk of her prized collection was confined to her bedroom because it had given her joy to wake up to them every morning. Before I'd left, I had a tradition of gifting her with bird figurines. It began with a storm petrel, a Wakamba carving of ebony wood from Kenya I had picked up at the museum gift shop from a sixth-grade school field trip. She'd adored the unexpected birthday present, and I had hunted for them since. Clusters of ceramic birds were perched on every shelf. Her obsession had brought her happiness, so I'd fed it. The tiki bird from French Polynesia nested beside a delft bluebird from the Netherlands. One of my favorites was a glass rainbow macaw from an Argentinian artist that mimicked the vibrant barrios of Buenos Aires. Since the sixth grade, I'd given her one every year until I'd left: eight birds in total. As I lifted each member of her extensive bird collection, I imagined Ma-ma was with me, telling a story about each one. There were no signs of dust anywhere; cleanliness had been her religion. I counted eighty-eight birds in total. Ma-ma had been busy collecting while I was gone. I couldn't deny that every time I saw a beautiful feathered creature in figurine form, I thought of my mother. If only I'd sent her one, even a single bird, from my travels, it could have been the precursor to establishing communication once more. Ma-ma had spoken to her birds often, especially when she cleaned them every Saturday morning. I had imagined she was some fairy-tale princess in the Black Forest holding court over an avian kingdom. I was tempted to speak to them now, but I didn't want to be the one to convey the loss of their queen. Suddenly, however, Ma-ma's collection stirred. It began as a single chirp, a mournful cry swelling into a chorus. The figurines burst into song, tiny beaks opening, chests puffed, to release a somber tribute to their departed beloved. The tune was unfamiliar, yet its melancholy was palpable, rising, surging until the final trill when every bird bowed their heads toward the empty bed, frozen as if they hadn't sung seconds before. I thanked them for the happiness they'd bestowed on Ma-ma.”

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Book:Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune
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“But in the early 1970s, we were not birdwatching. We were birding, and that made all the difference. We were out to seek, to discover, to chase, to learn, to find as many different kinds of birds as possible — and, in friendly competition, to try to find more of them than the next birder. We became a community of birders, with the complications that human societies always have; and although it was the birds that had brought us together, our story became a human story after all.”

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Book:Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder
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“The sun rose again. Nader woke up to the sounds of the laughing doves. He giggled as he listened to their lovey chirping. They talked nonstop with the loveliest voices ever. He closed his eyes again, trying to get back to sleep while listening to their lovely chirping. It only took him a minute to remember his task. He opened his eyes wide, astonished that he almost forgot all about his friend.”

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Book:The Desert Heroes
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“Never leave the egg in you not laid. Don't leave the laid eggs there not hatched. You deserve the best; you were created to use every gift in you!”

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Book:The Great Hand Book of Quotes
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“So sing. In rooms that shrink you. In moments that try to name your limits. Sing until the walls forget why they were built. So sing, even without answers. Sing when your faith is smaller than your fear. Sing because the song was placed in you by something that trusted you with it.”

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Book:Beacon of the Dark Night: Shining Hope Through the Shadows
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“And I've been thinking: if the human race manages to destroy itself, as it often seems to want to do, or if some great disaster comes, as it did for the dinosaurs, then the birds will still manage to survive. When our gardens and fields and farms and woods have turned wild, when the park at the end of Falconer Road has turned into a wilderness, when our cities are in ruins, the birds will go on flying and singing and making their nests and laying their eggs and raising their young. It could be that the birds will exist for ever and for ever until the earth itself comes to an end, no matter what might happen to the other creatures. They'll sing until the end of time. So here's my thought: If there is a God, could it be that He's chosen the birds to speak for Him. Could it be true? The voice of God speaks through the beaks of birds.”

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Book:My Name is Mina
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“We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths, and so we ate them. We wanted their feathers to bud from our flesh. We wanted their wings, we wanted to fly as they did, soar freely among the treetops and the clouds, and so we ate them. We speared them, we clubbed them, we tangled their feet in glue, we netted them, we spitted them, we threw them onto hot coals, and all for love, because we loved them. We wanted to be one with them. We wanted to hatch out of clean, smooth, beautiful eggs, as they did, back when we were young and agile and innocent of cause and effect, we did not want the mess of being born, and so we crammed the birds into our gullets, feathers and all, but it was no use, we couldn’t sing, not effortlessly as they do, we can’t fly, not without smoke and metal, and as for the eggs we don’t stand a chance. We’re mired in gravity, we’re earthbound. We’re ankle-deep in blood, and all because we ate the birds, we ate them a long time ago, when we still had the power to say no.”

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Author:Margaret Atwood
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“Every man should wake up alone and spend thirty minutes outside. He should spend thirty minutes with the rising sun listening for birds while pacing back and forth in ponderous thought, with a cool breeze on his nose and his arms stretched into the open air. He should spend thirty minutes alone with whatever view is available. Then he should go back to sleep.”

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Book:THIS SIDE OF A WILDERNESS: A Novel
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“Touching the face of the wind, dark wings flex and ease. They read the wisps of clouds forming above them, the dark heaves of mountains below. Now the sudden bounce of a thermal, now the yank of a downdraft, The birds of my mind tilt and swing as I lie in the blue bus, until finally, their taut wings bank up against the wind and they streak out of my head, peeling off one by one, like canoes that have been pointing upstream, arcing back into the roll of the river.”

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Book:The Black Swan: Memory, Midlife, and Migration
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“A Sunday rain awakes me up today, Raindrops keeping my sorrows at bay. Wall around me is now my lockdown friend, Quarantined me has now learnt to blend. Found my family that was always at shore, The lust of wealth is not there anymore. The loyal companion that is my pet, Always keeps me cheerful and buoyant. With the sky so blue and air so clear, My crony birds singing I can now hear. And though last but never the least, My pen, my text, reappears to feast. Happiness is always there with us right, In darkness we see that hides in light!”

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Author:Mukesh Kwatra
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