Birds change, we change, the world changes.

When we’re children we grow up not just within homes, not just within families and communities, but within ecologies, too — encircled by clouds of birds, sharing the air with insects and pollen, our paths crisscrossing those of hedgehogs and mice; our lives are shaped and tempered by these living worlds, these embracing atmospheres into which each of us is born.

No human ever lived in a birdless world.

Nature is about now. ‘Natural’ means us, too, if it means anything.

I think a bird’s being extends beyond entertaining, wit, its outstretched wingtips: its identity is knotted up in its habitat, in the world that has shaped it, and continues to shape it.

Our worlds, the little worlds of all living things, are enmeshed beyond all entangling. And yet we’re not all one, the birds, us, the insects, worms, flowers, the rest, not exactly; we’re walled up within our own experiences, our own capacities. We share a physical world but our sensory and mental worlds remain discrete, entire, complete.