Bird song is our loud alarm clock these spring days.

Best of any song
is bird song
in the quiet, but first
you must have the quiet.

— Wendell Berry. “1997.I”,  in A timbered choir: the Sabbath poems 1979-1997. New York, Counterpoint, 1992, p. 207. Picture from from cover of Birdsong: a natural history, by Don Stap. Oxford, 2006

“For, lo, the winter is past … The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come … ” Song of Solomon 3.11-12.