From the distance at intervals came the piercing cries of the ... sounding like bursts of hysterical laughter. ... This bird, which is about as large… - William Henry Hudson

... The gardener is usually attended by a friendly robin, and when he turns up the soil the bird will come down close to his feet to pick up the small grubs and worms. Is it not probable that the tameness of the tame young robin so frequently met with is, like that of the robin who keeps company with the gardener or woodman, an acquired habit; that the young bird has made the discovery that when a person is moving about among the plants, picking fruit perhaps, lurking insects are disturbed at the roots and small spiders and s shaken from the leaves? We are to the robin what the cow is to the and the sheep to the —a food finder.

… A friend once confessed to me that he was always profoundly unhappy at sea during long voyages, and the reason was that his sustaining belief in a superintending Power and in immortality left him when he was on that waste of waters, which have no human associations. The feeling, so intense in his case, is known to most if not all of us; but we feel it faintly as a disquieting element in nature of which we may be but vaguely conscious.

... it is impossible for us not to love whatever is lovely, and of all living things birds were made most beautiful.