The Genius of Birds

by Jennifer Ackerman

Birds are so often encountered this way, as disembodied voices.

Close to half the birds on the planet are songbirds, some four thousand species, with songs ranging from the mumbled melancholy chortle of the bluebird to the forty-note aria of the cowbird, the long, byzantine song of the sedge warbler, the flutelike tune of the hermit thrush, and the amazing seamless duets of the male and female plain-tailed wren.

the dawn chorus.

“A bird’s nest is the most graphic mirror of a bird’s mind.

This explains why retracing your steps can help you remember what you were looking for.

Your memory of a thought is married to the place in which it first occurred to you.

So that one cool April morning after being away for five years, Whitetail the racing pigeon can finally hightail it home.