Birds and beasts have in fact our own nature, flattened a semi-tone.
As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would interfere with flight.
No man had ever heard a nightingale, When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred To study and define -- what is a bird.
It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.
My father was an obsessive bird-watcher. The genes of observation passed down.
To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
Man is the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds are the plumed.
My wife determined that my genius should prevail, and that my final success as an ornithologist should be triumphant.
All I know of birds to this date is that sparrows are the ones that are not pigeons.
[Footnote:] The Dotterel weighs only four ounces. It has long been a scientific riddle how so much wrong-headedness can manage to exist in so small a space. Still, there's the Least Gnatcatcher.
