This ain't no ode to featherdom, 
per se, no paean to the sylvan breeze. 
This here's a little tweedle-hum 
of love for all the chickadees.  

For eagles, goshawks, ospreys, y'all, 
and other predators, like great-horned owls, 
big units of the food chain sprawl—
but also for the winky fowl 

that hide in bushes and go wheet:
the nuthatch, towhee, warbling wren.  
For shore birds (o ye killdeer sweet! 
Ye redleg stilts! both drakes and hens), 

for ducks and geese and bold mergansers 
whose webby paddles whet the sunlit sea, 
for corvids (with their raucous answers,  
even where no questions be). 

For pigeons clouding St. Marks Square 
and starlings' 3D fleur-de-lis, 
for blackbirds, with their cockeyed stare, 
and breeding-plumage verdigris 

in divers species— lapwings, parrots, 
Anna's hummers and fey bee eaters— 
for robin redbreasts, orange as carrots, 
for all the flocks of nectar-feeders. 

For long-flight frigates and albatross, 
for Vlad the shrike, for styling bower birds  
and millions more, my love's a loss  
though ardor overflow with words. 
I gaze and yearn, I list and long; 
I envy all their flight and song 
(with one small cavil: I eschew  
both flightless ostrich and emu).