Mornings these days resound with bird song, and it's a cheerful start to my day. The crimson-plumed male northern cardinal is one of the first songsters at the break of day. He sits atop a bush in my ...

poets and musicians, from Chaucer to Wordsworth, from Handel to Respighi. Birdsong can be a natural phenomenon of intense beauty. But our enjoyment is incidental to the main purpose, which is one bird ...