The thing with feathers

The term "bird watcher" seems to imply someone overdressed in khaki fatigues, wearing a floppy hat, with an enormous pair of binoculars drooping around his or her neck, a notepad in hand, in which she or he, in ecstasy, scribbles down the latest sighting of the yellow-bellied sapsucker. Profession: librarian or accountant. I mean, really, who would spend a day looking up into trees for a possible furtive glimpse of a bird when they might be off mountain climbing, running rapids or fishing for marlin?
                                                                   

Scarlet Tanager

I would. When I lived in New York City, I loved the ten or so days when birds were migrating north (spring) and south (fall). You could go to Central Park and see up to thirty or even forty species of birds in a single day—twenty or so species of warblers alone. Birds, and most especially the songs of birds, make me feel optimistic. (Emily Dickinson used birds as a metaphor for hope.) When I was a boy growing in in southeastern Virginia, I would wake up to the sweet cadences of the song sparrow. Take a second to give yourself a jolt of beauty by listening to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's recording of that bird's song. (Click on the second recording for the prettiest melody.)                             

You can ask the question, why do birds sing? I'm sure there's an answer. But how do you answer the question, why do birds sing so beautifully?
                                                                             

Prothonotary Warbler

I'm like any person who has ever watched a bird defy gravity. Not only that, but make a mockery of it, with sharp dips, pivots, banks and swoops and high soaring. For me, though, it's the hues of these birds that makes me crane my neck, searching high in the branches, for hours. To see, even for a few seconds, the deep oceanic blue of an Indigo Bunting or the fierce black and yellow of a Magnolia Warbler—go ahead, make my day. These photographs go some way to explaining the thrill, but you have to catch the glimpse in the wild, catch the appearance of the bird perched high in the tree—so much color in so small a form!—to get the full charge.
                                                                               

Indigo Bunting

                                                                             

Magnolia Warbler

I live in New Orleans now.  When I talk to people about Hurricane Katrina, time and time again I hear the same thing, "It was so quiet after the storm. There were no birds anywhere. You didn't hear a single bird singing." How, then, could you feel even the slightest bit of optimism? I can't even imagine it.