Be Your Own Bird & Help Migratory Birds

It's World Migratory Bird Day! Be Your Own Bird AND Help Birds - Buy "Be Your Own Bird"  and I'll donate half the proceeds to bird conservation efforts:

World Migratory Bird Day is an annual, UN-backed global awareness-raising and environmental education campaign focused on migratory birds and the need for international cooperation to conserve them.
"World Migratory Bird Day is celebrated each year to highlight the need for the conservation of migratory birds and their habitats. More than 300 events in more than 60 countries to mark World Migratory Bird Day 2018 (registered on the website) will include bird festivals, education programmes, media events, bird watching trips, presentations, film screenings and a benefit concert to raise funds for international nature conservation. The Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) and the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) — two intergovernmental wildlife treaties administered by UN Environment — organize the campaign in cooperation with Environment for the Americas (EFTA). EFTA works with diverse partners to provide English and Spanish educational materials and information about birds and bird conservation throughout the Americas. Their programmes inspire children and adults to go outdoors, learn about birds, and participate in their conservation. www.worldmigratorybirdday.org/partners"

Bird Songs II: "I Like Birds" "Broken Wings Heal" and "Proud Penguin"

More selections from the world of contemporary bird-referencing songs. 

"I Like Birds" by The Eels
This punchy number caught my ear more than a decade ago when a friend turned me on to The Eels. No birder pretension here, just simple bird appreciation:

"I can't look at the rocket launch
The trophy wives of the astronauts
And I won't listen to their words
'Cause I like birds

I don't care for walking downtown
Crazy auto-car gonna mow me down
Look at all the people like cows in a herd
Well, I like birds

If you're small and on a search
I've got a feeder for you to perch on"

"Razor Wire" by Carolyn Aiken
There are bird references all over Aiken's latest recording, Broken Wings Heal, and the title track itself is a confident ode to healing. But "Razor Wire" is the heartbreaking gut punch of the album, a song I first heard live at The Freight a last summer:
"behind razor wire
sings a song bird
her heart beats strong
her spirit flies free
undaunted and sublime
she sings to the sun and the wind and the trees
she remembers in her dreams
Outside her confines
she knows what it’s like
flying tandem with her kind
free to dive and climb and be
and she…dreams
of the time she will fly
and readies her wings
calming her mind
knowing that all that stands between her and the sky
is time."

 
"Proud Penguin" by Jamie Purnell
Purnell is a Bay Area songwriter I met at FAR-West. He performed this song live the other night at the KC  Turner Presents Shhhongwriters Open Mic at Doc's Lab. A shorty and powerful ditty about flying, swimming, being only who you can be and self acceptance, I couldn't help but love it. 
"hey there seagull, it's fun to swim in the sea/I may not be able to fly, but I'm happy to be me."

Know of a fairly-recent (post-2000) "bird song" I should hear? Please email me! 

Bird Songs: "All Over Ohio", "Birds Fly South" & "Scarecrow"

photo by Don McCullough

As I'm one of those lifelong bird people (I considered a bird-related career path in college, studying natural history and working to release peregrine falcons for the Predatory Bird Research Group) I notice the actual and metaphorical birds wherever I am, and birds tend to show up routinely in my own writing. But even music lovers who are the most disinclined to ornithology know many bird-related songs: The Beatles "Blackbird," Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" and Skynyrd's "Freebird" (like it or not) are pretty much of the modern-day canon. At a concert last summer, I was struck again at how often birds appear in lyrics, even among songwriters that aren't really "birders." The past few months I've started "collecting" contemporary (post-2000) bird-referencing songs, and will be sharing my favorites here. Know of a fairly-recent "bird song" I should hear? Please email me. 
In the meantime, here's a sampling of some of my recent favorites: 
 
"All Over Ohio" by Over the Rhine
I swoon over the sensibilities of Over the Rhine in general, who call an Ohio farm home between their own musical peregrinations,  and whose lyrics bespeak their deep connection to place. They know their land deeply, as well as the creatures who share it. "All Over Ohio," sung in duet, is a long, lovely tour both of place and the birdly need to come and go: 

"And the starlings they were flying
Earlier today
Doing their maneuvers
Clouds of feathers on display
Makes me wanna kneel in prayer but
I’ve forgotten what to say
I’ll just name all the birds in Ohio
...

All I wanna be is a thousand black birds*
Bursting from a tree into the blue
Love – let it be not just a feeling
But the broken beauty
Of what we choose to do"

*Listen to an actual blackbird call HERE.
 

"Birds Fly South" by The Mastersons  
The Mastersons, an Austin-based duo, also evoke bird migration in the title track of their 2012 release, a song about their own need to move, the pull of the heart, the mystery and reasons  of why humans and animals pick up and go when they do. 
Birds fly south, before the cold
all night, I'm going to drive
New York's getting me down
run out of reason to hang around
that's why birds fly south, 
when it all comes down 
All night, I'm going to drive
Will you be, right by my side?


"Scarecrow" by Michael McNevin 
This is one of my all-time favorite songs for a lot of reasons: not only it it a great evocation of the behavior of gulls* (the species of sea bird I've projected upon this song), its a beautiful love song, period. I believe its won some awards, and I've a CD containing the song, but it's hard to find online to easily share.  Fortunately, for these purposes, there's this video (Track McNevin down at one of his shows or hit him up at Muddpuddle Music if you want your own copy.) I heard him sing it the first time I saw him perform and became an insta-fan. 
She's a sea bird I'm a scarecrow
She came to rest upon my elbow
She flys fast I watch the corn grow
Will she come back, well damned if I know
Damned if I know
 ...
She's a sea bird I'm a scarecrow
Will I turn to driftwood in the shallows?
Damned if I know, damned if I know

*Listen to an actual California gull call HERE.

 
(McNevin's also got a song called "Early Bird" worth giving a listen)