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I can recognize the calls of practically every bird in North America. There are some in Africa I don't know, though.

All birds are incipient or would-be songsters in the spring. I find corroborative evidence of this even in the crowing of the cock.

I'm not really a bird person or an Audubon guy who studies them, but as I was around them, they interested me.

Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grossbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.

I was told all my life I was part Cherokee. Then it was Crow. The latest is Blackfoot.

The son of a Fife mining town sledder of coal-bings, bottle-forager, and picture-house troglodyte, I was decidedly urban and knew little about native fauna, other than the handful of birds I saw on trips to the beach or Sunday walks.

Birds are the most popular group in the animal kingdom. We feed them and tame them and think we know them. And yet they inhabit a world which is really rather mysterious.

Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird?

I really like birds. Everyone always wants me to say that I can't stand to go near them, just like they want Janet Leigh to confess that she can't bear to take a shower. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

The Crows are very handsome and gentlemanly Indians in their personal appearance: and have been always reputed, since the first acquaintance made with them, very civil and friendly.