The hills are alive with the sound of music. And it’s only just begun. Familiar voices of spring announce that the annual bird migration is underway. Because spring migrants return slowly in early ...

The song of the Swainson’s thrush defies description — three low notes followed by an upward burble in a cautionary key, like a sound you might hear in space, as if R2D2 sang a piece by Mozart. While ...

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 ...