Ornithologists Birds Quotes

I felt him there with me. The real David. My David.
David, you are still here. Alive. Alive in me.
Alive in the galaxy.
Alive in the stars.
Alive in the sky.
Alive in the sea.
Alive in the palm trees.
Alive in feathers.
Alive in birds.
Alive in the mountains.
Alive in the coyotes.
Alive in books.
Alive in sound.
Alive in mom.
Alive in dad.
Alive in Bobby.
Alive in me.
Alive in soil.
Alive in branches.
Alive in fossils.
Alive in tongues.
Alive in eyes.
Alive in cries.
Alive in bodies.
Alive in past, present and future.
Alive forever. ~ Kelly Easton

There were always the birds ~ Lauren Oliver

At the Moor
Wanderer in the black wind; quietly the dry reeds whisper
In the stillness of the moor. In the gray sky
A flock of wild birds follows;
Slanting over gloomy waters.
Turmoil. In decayed hut
The spirit of putrescence flutters with black wings.
Crippled birches in the autumn wind.
Evening in deserted tavern. The way home is scented all around
By the soft gloom of grazing herds;
Apparition of the night; toads plunge from brown waters. ~ Georg Trakl

We've been sitting in our tree chirping like foolish birds for over a century now, wondering why no other birds answered. The galactic skies are full of hawks, that's why. Planetisms that don't know enough to keep quiet, get eaten. ~ Greg Bear

wind stinging our faces
overhead the birds
shrieking turn back
turn back turn back

behind us, look,
bright fields, the sea
glinting gold!

we've come this far
chasing the rain,
the sun at our heels. ~ Merlie M. Alunan

If this was a sandalwood pyre she would have thrown herself in and this paper she'd become would have caught fire and she and him could sail away like two birds. ~ Janet Fitch

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight. ~ Francis Bacon

Afterward (or, The Bridge)

Because desire always exceeds
its object. Because the energy you gave me

feels big enough to birth wings. Because
I want you to push into the wetness

and I know it. Because of the salt
and the wind. Because everything

that is supposed to happen
will happen, is happening, or

has already happened. Because
ambivalence is more beautiful

than justice. Because my heart is
shooting ahead, and I have no choice

but to follow it. Because I want you
to be happy, with or without me.

Because of the birds fleeing the storm.
Because the harbor is permeable

and shining. Because it felt like
that last night of my life

but it wasn't. Because a web of cables
is there to catch me if I blow

sideways, and always will be. Because
I walked across the bridge and was free. ~ Maggie Nelson

I don't see [the jungle] so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It's just - Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain. ~ Werner Herzog

Does that have to go in?" Lada asked.
"What do you mean?" Wistala said, brought back to the dictation.
"The battle. Betrayals. Incompetence, even cowardice. Boats falling, mud everywhere, blood running from balconies, carrion birds poking marrow from bones, dwarves hanging from bridges, burned corpses, but worst of all, no hero whose courage and skill is put to the ultimate test."
"They asked for a history, they shall have my history. If someone else will have the battle take place on a spring-green field with pennants at the lance points and songs sung over the honored dead, let them write it thus. This history is a story of death begetting death, and should end with carrion birds, for they are the only ones who come out the better at the end. ~ E.E. Knight

The sun was shining, but Christ had hidden Himself, and all the world was black to you; or it was night, and since the bright and morning star was gone, no other star could yield you so much as a ray of light. What a howling wilderness is this world without our Lord! If once He hideth Himself from us, withered are the flowers of our garden; our pleasant fruits decay; the birds suspend their songs, and a tempest overturns our hopes. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The firelight magnified our shadows, glinted off the silver, flickered high upon the walls; its reflection roared orange in the windowpanes as if a city were burning outside. The whoosh of the flames was like a flock of birds, trapped and beating in a whirlwind near the ceiling. And I wouldn't have been at all surprised if the long mahogany banquet table, draped in linen, laden with china and candles and fruit and flowers, had simply vanished into thin air, like a magic casket in a fairy story. ~ Donna Tartt

Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wings and removing its ability to fly. ~ Wm. Paul Young

Darkness retreats and the Sun rises. Red, yellow and orange creep into clear blue, the sweet airborne calls of waking birds echo across the black mirror of the Lake, a crisp draft carries the bitter of cold into the reserve of night. I stand and I walk back to the Unit and dew on the dead grass soaks through my shoes and i watch my feet break the crystalline perfection of the morning's drops and the drops are just another thing I've destroyed, another thing I can't fix or bring back, another beautiful thing ruined by my carelessness. I don't stop. I don't stop destroying and don't change my course and I don't look back. Looking back hurts too much, so I just keep going. ~ James Frey

The largest outbreak of bird flu in American history was an H5N2 virus, which led to the deaths of 17 million domestic birds and cost the nation more than $400 million during an outbreak in Pennsylvania that started in 1983. ~ Michael Greger

They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they woke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish-–something they heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They had all their little treasures. . . And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and he believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries––perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on. ~ Virginia Woolf

Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever ... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier. ~ Anton Chekhov

My iPhone has 2 million times the storage of the 1969 Apollo 11 computer. They went to the moon. I throw birds at pig houses ~ Bill Murray

the one of insane geometries, of orange lightning, of fire that rained from trees like leaves falling, of the birds rising from the water their impossibly pure white wings spreading across the burning sky. As ~ Douglas Clegg

I feel overawed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By unrepeatability within such a quantity. By creatures of nature gathered in herds, droves, species, in which each individual, while subservient to the mass, retains some distinguishing features. A crowd of people, birds, insects, or leaves is a mysterious assemblage of variants of certain prototype. A riddle of nature's abhorrence of exact repetition or inability to produce it. Just as the human hand cannot repeat its own gesture, I invoke this disturbing law, switching my own immobile herds into that rhythm. ~ Magdalena Abakanowicz

How did I ever love you,
you used to kill birds. ~ Jordan Cabrera

One of the bibles of my youth was 'Birds of the West Indies,' by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought, 'My God, that's the dullest name I've ever heard,' so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one. ~ Ian Fleming

It is sad when man's unhappiness veils from him the smiling face of nature. The promise of the early morning was maintained. The sky was of a translucent blue, broken with islands and continents of clouds, dazzling white like cotton-wool. A soft, warm breeze blew from the west, the birds sang merrily in every garden bush, and Cullerne was a town of gardens, where men could sit each under his own vine and fig-tree. The bees issued forth from their hives, and hummed with cheery droning chorus in the ivy-berries that covered the wall-tops with deep purple. The old vanes on the corner pinnacles of Saint Sepulchre's tower shone as if they had been regilt. Great flocks of plovers flew wheeling over Cullerne marsh, and flashed with a blinking silver gleam as they changed their course suddenly. Even through the open window of the organist's room fell a shaft of golden sunlight that lit up the peonies of the faded, threadbare carpet.

But inside beat two poor human hearts, one unhappy and one hopeless, and saw nothing of the gold vanes, or the purple ivy-berries, or the plovers, or the sunlight, and heard nothing of the birds or the bees. ~ John Meade Falkner

If we studied birds, maybe we could learn to be free. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Song of myself
Now I will do nothing but listen,
To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.

I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames,
clack of sticks cooking my meals,
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,
Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of
work-people at their meals,
The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing
a death-sentence,
The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the
refrain of the anchor-lifters,
The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking
engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights,
The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,
The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two,
(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)

I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,)
I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears,
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.

I hear the chorus, it is a grand oper ~ Walt Whitman

And whether it is Thursday, or the day is stormy,
With thunder and rain, or the birds attack each other,
We have rolled into another dream. ~ John Asherby

Life is a great poetry.
To live it at its best
Write a love story
And be a great poet.

Life is a great poetry.
To love it at its best
Love everyone earnestly,
Without judging for a crest.

Life is a great poetry.
To live it at its best
Create a great history
Before going for the rest.

Life is a great poetry.
To paint it at its best
Through colors openly
As if, life is not a test.

Life is a great poetry.
To enjoy it at its best
Enjoy a golden dusk party
When birds return to nest. ~ Debasish Mridha

If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur, then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human. ~ Thomas Berry

Broken Wings Don't break a bird's wings and then tell it to fly. Don't break a heart and then tell it to love. Don't break a soul and then tell it to be happy. Don't see the worst in a person and expect them to see the best in you. Don't judge people and expect them to stand by your side. Don't play with fire and expect to stay perfectly safe. Life is about giving and taking. You cannot expect to give bad and receive good. You cannot expect to give good and receive bad. Does it happen? Yes, but don't make that an excuse for you to keep doing what you know is wrong. Don't blame life for what you do. That is so selfish and ignorant on your behalf. ~ Najwa Zebian

Even the song of birds, which we can bring under no musical rule, seems to have more freedom, and therefore more for taste, than a song of a human being which is produced in accordance with all the rules of music; for we very much sooner weary of the latter, if it is repeated often and at length. Here, however, we probably confuse our participation in the mirth of a little creature that we love, with the beauty of its song; for if this were exactly imitated by man (as sometimes the notes of the nightingale are) it would seem to our ear quite devoid of taste. ~ Immanuel Kant

When I found you, I didn't know what I was finding," Alec said. "Words about things that are beautiful and precious to me don't come easily. You know that. You know me better than anyone." He licked his dry lips. "And when one day people look back on me and what my life meant, I don't want them to say, 'Alec Lightwood fought in the Dark War' or even 'Alec Lightwood was Consul once.' I want them to think, 'Alec Lightwood loved one man so much he changed the world for him.' "
Magnus's eyes shone bright as stars. He gazed at Alec with eyes full of joy, of a feeling so profound Alec felt humbled to be a part of it. "You know you've already changed the world for me."
"Will you marry me?" Alec whispered. His heart was beating like a frantic bird's wings. "Right now? Tonight?"
Magnus nodded wordlessly and pulled Alec to his feet. They wrapped their arms around each other, and Alec leaned up just that little bit, since Magnus was just that little bit taller, which he had always loved.
And they kissed for a long time. ~ Cassandra Clare

Eternity hums with every beating heart, with every up-lifted voice, with the crash of waves, the whirl of wind across the shifting dunes, the cry of sea birds, and the trumpets of heavenly angels. ~ Janell Rhiannon

….unable to find a title for her last published novel, she wrote six lines which included her eventual title The Birds Fall Down. These lines were attributed to Conway Power (the name she generally appended to her poetry, even in her private notebooks), from a non-existent poem called 'Guide to a Disturbed Planet.' When the novel was published she had fun deflecting the enquiries of readers who wanted to know how to find the works of Conway Power. One was told a long story: Conway Power was a landowner in a remote area who had written thousands of poems and destroyed most of them. He had left some of them with her, given his property to a nephew, and gone abroad. 'If I can trace the book (if there is a book) I'll let you know. ~ Victoria Glendinning

Feathers shall raise men even as they do birds towards heaven :- That is by letters written with their quills. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

To be standing together in a frosty field, looking up into the sky, marvelling at birds and revelling in the natural world around us, was a simple miracle. And I wondered why we were so rarely able to appreciate it. ~ Lynn Thomson

The house I grew up in had large plate-glass windows, which birds frequently crashed into headfirst. My father helped me assemble a bird hospital, consisting of a few shoe boxes, some old rags, and tiny dishes for water and food. ~ Patti Davis

The Universe story is the quintessence of reality. We perceive the story. We put it in our language, the birds put it in theirs, and the trees put it in theirs. We can read the story of the Universe in the trees. Everything tells the story of the Universe. The winds tell the story, literally, not just imaginatively. The story has its imprint everywhere, and that is why it is so important to know the story. If you do not know the story, in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything. ~ Thomas Berry