More on songbirds, from Annie Dillard

Nature is vaster than we will ever perceive.

"Our meaningful activity scarcely covers the terrain. We do not use the songbirds for instance. We do not eat many of them; we cannot befriend them; we cannot persuade them to eat more mosquitoes or plant fewer weed seeds.

"[Their] show would play to an empty house, as do falling stars which fall in the daytime.

"That is why I take walks."

From pages 72, 73 of the 1982 edition of Teaching a Stone to Talk.