SPRINGFIELD, MO. — The toms had been roving through the yard all afternoon, and I stared out the picture window at their feathers gleaming bronze, the strange beards dangling from their breasts, and the weird erectile projections perched on their faces.

By now, the others had moved on; one turkey rested in the shade of the walnut trees, his head and eyelids drooping.

Above him in the green, something tiny moved. It was yellow, not a goldfinch…. Aha — snazzy black cap. A Wilson’s Warbler.

SPRINGFIELD, MO. — While my patient dozed in front of a football game, I stepped outside to straighten up the back porch. As I rounded the corner of the house, four turkeys looked up, startled.

They jogged off into the walnuts, but they didn’t go far. I sat down on the step, and I could see them, cleverly hidden among the shadows and the coralberry. They scratched away the leaves with their powerful feet, sometimes settling down comfortably into the hollows they had scraped.

An insistent young goldfinch begged repeatedly. Let’s eat. Let’s eat. Let’s eat. Let’s eat. Just feed me. Let’s eat. Let’s eat.

Two more turkeys approached from the south, slowly passing through all the neighbors’ yards. One veered off into the woods, but another kept coming. He stood straight and tall, and I was sure he was looking at me. Afternoon sun lit up the loose red skin dangling from his throat. Crock-crock-crock-crock-crock-crock-crock.

Then he came toward me, and I thought he might pass right by. But he too wandered off into deeper cover. Just a moment, the turkey and me. We each had stopped dead in our tracks, and though I can’t speak for him, I for one was swept up in the wonder of the moment, forgetting what I’d started to do. And this, I thought, is why I bird.

The day was cool, a promise that summer’s heat cannot last forever. A gentle breeze reached far deeper than the skin it caressed, filling me with ineffable delight.

Chickadees, cardinals, doves, and robins came and went, and a grackle made a racket in the woods. I heard a flicker yelp, and a Hairy Woodpecker called sharply. A handful of Turkey Vultures soared over, casting menacing shadows across the trees and looking, as always, just a little bit tipsy.

After supper and the evening’s errands, I went out again and sat in the driveway. The bricks were warm against my back. A pair of bluebirds and a phoebe dallied across the street, and a hummingbird zipped across the western sky.

I saw a few Chimney Swifts, and there were five nighthawks, only five. I’m sure there are plenty of good reasons — maybe most of them are already through, or maybe the large numbers condense over pastures. But I couldn’t keep from thinking about the warning I’d read: disappearing thunderbirds.

GREENE CO., MO. — An ivory glow behind clouds, the huge disk itself barely distinguishable through the haze. By the time I reach the driveway, I can see her over the house at the end of the street, enormous, full, the harvest moon. Summer’s end is near. A bat flutters through the sky.

SPRINGFIELD, MO. — Why do birds sing? We are more comfortable if we content ourselves with simple answers: to attract mates, to defend territory, to express emotion. Because sexual selection produced their songs over millions of years. Because God gave them their songs.

Birders can be even worse, reducing bird song to a mere means of identification. Northern Cardinal. American Goldfinch. Hooded — no, Chestnut-sided Warbler. And then the ears shut off until a new challenge presents itself. Carolina Chickadee.

But rote answers and hasty check marks barely even begin to unravel the ancient mystery: Why do birds sing?

David Rothenberg — musician, academic, searcher — is uniquely gifted to pursue the question. “Why Birds Sing” chronicles his personal journey, “a journey into the mystery of bird song.” From Middle Eastern legends to computer-processed data, Rothenberg wanders through time and across disciplines in search of an answer. Along the way, he introduces us to world-renowned poets, to a naturalist with pitch perfect enough to identify the frequency of beating insects’ wings, and to a few eccentric geniuses, some avian and some human, who incorporate each others’ melodies into their own.

The selfish projections of Romantic poets do not satisfy Rothenberg, nor does current evolutionary theory. Birds are not like us; to hear in their voices only our own is a mistake. Selective pressures, as scientists understand them today, cannot explain the extravagance, complexity, and beauty of bird song.

A clarinetist himself, Rothenberg calls bird song “alien music.” Though perhaps eerie at first, the term proves quite appropriate. We can never understand what it is like to be a bird. Their experience — and their music — intersects our own, but it is a mistake to think of them as more similar than they are. Some of the writers Rothenberg examines grew frustrated because their birds did not make human music. And just why should we expect them to? Rothenberg wonders.

We have come to understand some of the functions of bird song. But are birds unfeeling, mechanical songsters, driven to sing but never understanding what it is they do? Rothenberg doesn’t think so. They are alien musicians; they sing, he says, because they can.

But in the end, Rothenberg seems unwilling to go where his ideas, and the beauty produced by his alien musicians, lead him. Birds sing because they can, because they must, because they will to live. Science cannot explain where they got their songs or why. “Science needs morality if it is going to save the world,” he writes. And later, “No explanation will ever erase the eternal need for song.” Morality? An eternal need for song? Rothenberg seems to have glimpsed something beyond the world, but he wants to stay behind.

With his information, his passion, and his quest to know, Rothenberg chipped away at the calluses over my own heart and ears. He left me longing to listen to a starling’s song — really listen to it — for the first time. Even Brown-headed Cowbirds possess an ability unique in the known world of bird song, and when I hear them again this spring, it will be with less disgust and more awe.

In a good mystery, each new revelation leaves us hungry for more. We are captivated, yearning, even as the final solution seems to slip further and further into obscurity. “Why Birds Sing” leads us deeper into a beautiful labyrinth in which we could well lose ourselves forever. Perhaps we surrender to the questions and to shudders of delight, beginning to believe that the answer (if it exists at all) is not so important in the end.

But what if it is?

SPRINGFIELD, MO. — I heard back from Guy Dutson today about my Aplonis starling mystery. He was interested in my report and said that my description did indeed sound like Atoll Starlings.

Of especial interest was the comment, “Immature Atoll S is all-dark with paler rufous fringes on the underparts - very different from immature Singing Starlings.” That seems to fit with my observations. While I did not specifically see rufous-fringed birds, I did see some that looked dull, lacking the greenish sheen. I did not observe even one bird that was white below and streaked.

Dutson continued: “Based on its small geographical range, BirdLife listed Atoll S as Vulnerable in 2000 but the IUCN red list criteria have subsequently changed and its status is now Near Threatened. Nonetheless, it would be good news for the species if it was also on Wuvulu!”

I never expected to come away with data of interest to the larger scientific community. It’s all very exciting, though I still keep wishing I’d been better prepared.

SPRINGFIELD, MO. — I heard titmice scolding when I stepped out for the newspaper. I looked up at the big tree across the street and saw a raptor’s silhouette. I hurried back inside for my binoculars.

It was a Cooper’s Hawk, probably a female. This much I could tell by the bird’s bulk — she was larger than the crows that sometimes perch in the same branches. She wore the reddish bars of an adult across her breast, but her eyes were still yellow. She appeared to be molting her tailfeathers, which were of various lengths and rather scruffy-looking.

A thump sent me back through the front door, worried that my patient had fallen. But he was fine, and he asked what I’d been looking at. I answered his questions as I started cooking breakfast. Could a Cooper’s Hawk take one of the baby turkeys he sometimes sees nearby? Probably so.

In other news, I and the Bird #6 was published last night. Check it out!