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In 1963, on a song called “Surfin’ Bird,” a one-hit-wonder surf rock band called the Trashmen claimed that the “bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word.” They might be right. Look and listen closely, and you’ll find that birds are everywhere in literature and song.

Birds give humans things that we might aim to achieve (the beauty of their song, for instance) and things about which we can only dream (the exhilaration off unaided flight). They live deep in our language, too — in stock phrases (“birds of a feather flock together”) and in our most exalted similes (“Higher still and higher / From the earth thou springest / Like a cloud of fire,” wrote the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley over 200 years ago).

The best birdwatching — at least of the literary variety — is found in song lyrics. Birds, after all, are often creatures of melody. They are also symbolically rich: inviting metaphor, simile and other rhetorical figures and forms.

I’m not a poet, but I once wrote a cento, a collage poem, built entirely upon quotations from song lyrics featuring our feathered friends. Here’s an excerpt: “Like a bird on the wire / like a drunk in a midnight choir / I have tried in my way to be free” / “Free as a bird / Home, home and dry / Like a homing bird I’ll fly / As a bird on wings.” / “And, baby, all I need for you to know is / I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away.” / “Fly like an eagle to the sea.”

(That’s Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on the Wire,” The Beatles’ “Free as a Bird,” Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like a Bird” and the Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like an Eagle” for those keeping score.)

Below you’ll find a baker’s dozen “bird songs,” both old and new. Some simply play upon a phrase or strike upon a simile, while others more closely explore the conditions and connections of birds themselves. Together, they comprise an avian songbook that crosses genre and time.

Read the full story.

Portrait by Stephanie Yantz/composite by Trever Ducote