Ornithology Quotes

[Audubon's works are] the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology. ~ Georges Cuvier

Think of the following event: A collection of hieratic persons (from Harvard or some such place) lecture birds on how to fly. Imagine bald males in their sixties, dressed in black robes, officiating in a form of English that is full of jargon, with equations here and there for good measure. The bird flies. Wonderful confirmation! They rush to the department of ornithology to write books, articles, and reports stating that the bird has obeyed them, an impeccable causal inference. The Harvard Department of Ornithology is now indispensable for bird flying. It will get government research funds for its contribution. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Where did you hide your Mockingbirds?" he asks.
"Ornithology," she replies.
"You hid TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD with the bird books?" I ask.
Elena shrugs. "I was being ironic. ~ Paul Acampora

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. ~ Robert Lynd

[I]t was [Barnett] Newman who made the famously wry remark, Aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds, ~ Ross Wetzsteon

Facts swooped like swallows, darting across her mind; there was a rush of pride in things still remembered. Singing was limited to the perching birds, the order Passeriformes. Nearly half the birds in the world didn't sing, but they still used sound to communicate- calls as opposed to song. Most birds had between five and fifteen distinct calls in their repertoire; alarm and territorial defense calls, distress calls from juveniles to bring an adult to the rescue, flight calls to keep the flock coordinated, even separate calls for commencing and ending flight. Nest calls. Feeding calls. Pleasure calls. Some chicks used calls to communicate with their mothers while they were still in the egg. ~ Tracy Guzeman

As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to birds. ~ Barnett Newman

It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Music criticism should be to musicians what ornithology is to the birds. ~ Yuja Wang