Bird Quotes by John Burroughs

If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart.

— John Burroughs

How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer them suitable nesting retreats!

— John Burroughs

Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer…

— John Burroughs

All birds are incipient or would-be songsters in the spring. I find corroborative evidence of this even in the crowing of the…

— John Burroughs

August is the month of the high-sailing hawks. The hen hawk is the most noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of…

— John Burroughs

When nature made the blue-bird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of…

— John Burroughs

Most birds are very stiff-necked, like the robin, and as they run or hop upon the ground, carry the head as if…

— John Burroughs

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the…

— John Burroughs

Natural history is a matter of observation; it is a harvest which you gather when and where you find it growing. Birds…

— John Burroughs

When the woodpecker is searching for food, or laying siege to some hidden grub, the sound of his hammer is dead or…

— John Burroughs

The bluebird enjoys the preeminence of being the first bit of color that cheers our northern landscape. The other birds that arrive…

— John Burroughs

The art of the bird is to conceal its nest both as to position and as to material, but now and then…

— John Burroughs

The phoebe-bird is a wise architect and perhaps enjoys as great an immunity from danger, both in its person and its nest,…

— John Burroughs

For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something kindred and precious from my environment--the…

— John Burroughs

In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making…

— John Burroughs

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the…

— John Burroughs

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or…

— John Burroughs

The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in…

— John Burroughs