The naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch thought it was this very song of the birds that demonstrated an excess, a redundancy in nature. Birds sing to warn of danger, or to attract a mate. But they also sing for joy. One biologist has written, “To be a bird is to be alive more intensely than any other living creature, man included. . . . They live in a world that is always the present, mostly full of joy.” Joy itself is not necessary, useful, or productive to the workings of the natural world. In a universe limited by the economy of the essential, joy is proof of a surplus. In the grueling contest
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