Not the kind you hear in the dawn chorus (though I guess it sorta depends on your neighborhood).
Songs inspired by birds, songs about birds, some birds that just barely qualify by virtue of having a bird in the title... all of the elements are here to put together a mix for your next birding road trip.
"I Like Birds" by Eels, animation by Vladimir Posokhin
(Another fun version, with birds of French Guiana)
Gotta add a warning - this week's edition is not dial-up friendly. Sorry 'bout that. Next week it will be back to only moderately bad (just pictures, vs. a bunch of video embeds)
Birds have inspired artists from the earliest times. As soon as people figured out how to make images, they drew birds. When they learned to carve, they carved birds. When they began to write, they wrote about birds - and sometimes even wrote with birds. Before they started writing things down, they told stories about birds - they are frequently featured in creation myths. And when people began to sing and make music, they no doubt echoed the very first singers... the birds.
They proved inspirational to one of the greatest classical music composers:
On 27 May 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart purchased a starling. Three years later, he buried it with much ceremony. Heavily veiled mourners marched in a procession, sang hymns, and listened to a graveside recitation of a poem Mozart had composed for the occasion. Mozart's performance has received mixed reviews. Although some see his gestures as those of a sincere animal lover, others have found it hard to believe that the object of Mozart's grief was a dead bird. Another event in the same week has been put forth as a more likely cause for Mozart's funereal gestures: the death of his father Leopold.
The scholars who have reported and interpreted this historical incident knew much about Mozart but little, if anything, about starlings.
(from Starling Talk)
A bit more from renowned birdsong expert Luis Baptista on Mozart and "A Musical Joke".
Mockingbirds, amazing songsters and mimics that they are, have insprired many songs over the years. Listen to the Mockingbird (aka "The Mocking Bird - Fantasia"), here on a wax cylinder recording from 1912, being played on xylophone. And, of course, there is the Carly Simon/James Taylor version of "Mockingbird", but (given my Motown roots) it's hard to beat Aretha Franklin doing her version in the mid-60's:
The 60s also brought that classic by the Trashmen, "Surfin' Bird". It's got about as much to do with birds as W had to do with restoring honor to the White House, but we have been known to bust out singing it when we find a particularly cool bird. I'm hoping kestrel9000 will show up with his version, set to the original, so let's go with the Ramones version here:
From something utterly unconnected to birds, we can bounce to the Beatles' "Blackbird" which actually includes a bit of a "duet" with a European Blackbird. New world blackbirds are icterids and don't have particularly melodic voices, but European Blackbirds are thrushes and their voices have all of the beautiful, flutelike qualities of that family. [Update: ThomasB rightly points out that there are many wonderful singers among the icterids.]
I mostly remember "Fly Like an Eagle" from sitting around in my friend's basement and smoking pot, but this sets the tune to more interesting imagery.
I've got a few more that I'll add in the comments, but what can you add to the mix?
Thanks to jeremy for fixing the comment problem!