And Speaking of Birds… Bartok says "Drink your Tee-e-e-e"
The songs of birds have inspired human song, as well. Step outside and soak in your own inspiration.

Actually, composer Bela Bartok stole that line from the Eastern Towhee (during an April 1944 visit to Asheville, North Carolina) and incorporated it into his Third Piano Concerto. According to an April 20, 2003 article by Pierre Ruhe in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Bartok also uses flutes and clarinets to quote hermit thrushes and wood thrushes in the "Adagio religioso" section of that piece. Bartok wrote at the time, "The birds have become drunk with the spring and are putting on concerts the like of which I've never heard."

Birds the world over have found their way into human music. The sounds of birds were mimicked in the music of Rameau and in Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons." Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17 includes a melody first whistled by that composer's pet starling. Beethoven evokes the calls of cuckoos, nightingales and quails in his "Pastoral Symphony."

Twentieth-century composer Olivier Messiaen was perhaps the most taken with birds, writing an entire set of piano pieces, "Catalogue of the Birds," in 1958. Featured among the 13 birds are the tawny owl and the short-toed lark.

The towhee may be one of the Piedmont region's more memorable performers, but that vast, forested area, which also includes metropolitan Atlanta, is full of song birds. Gordon McWilliams, Atlanta-area Audubon Society member, says the best time of year in his area is April and May, when the local bird population is augmented by visitors -- birds that overwinter in the tropics and are headed back north for the summer.

One of the most versatile birds is Georgia's own state bird, the brown thrasher, which boasts more than 1,000 song types, the largest repertoire of any North American bird.

Hear songs from more than 550 North American birds

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Read the April 20, 2003 Atlanta Journal Constitution article by Pierre Ruhe [account required]