GREENE CO., MO. — The weathermen had predicted a chance of snow for this morning, but we awoke to a wet and quite unfrozen world.

One of my gifts was “Birds of the Solomons, Vanuatu & New Caledonia,” and I pored over it as the family arrived for dinner. It has solved a mystery for me: The triller I saw my last day in Port Vila was of the Polynesian persuasion. I didn’t think he looked very long tailed, but in this case the white eyebrow I observed was diagnostic. So was the two-note call, evidently.

My grandfather wanted to look through the book and quickly became enthralled by its colorful plates of whistlers, honeyeaters, parrots, pigeons, and doves. He was amazed by the subtle differences between species — and the immense differences between our birds and the birds of the South Pacific. I tried to explain a bit about island biogeography, but my own knowledge on the subject is sorely lacking.

Looking at the pictures, and talking about the birds, I could feel myself getting excited again. I have so much still to see!

I quietly renewed my resolve to write Brian Coates about my Atoll Starlings.

Chickadees and titmice fed just outside the window as we feasted together at noon. House Finches and goldfinches came sometimes, and juncos always skitter around.

Chickadees are a Christmas bird to me, and I haven’t figured out why. Perhaps the feeling grew during winters and winters of feeding birds. In the years before my serious birding began, I probably never saw them outside of winter. Their crisp black and white, their cheery-sounding calls, and their rambunctious acrobatics seem perfectly suited to brisk winds and snow. But no snow this year.

I saw chickadees after dark too, printed on a turtleneck that we brought to Aunt Adele. We went by her room to give her a gift and sing a few carols too. Mom put the package on her lap, and she said it was very nice. But she didn’t know what to do with it.

She rubbed her hands across the shiny paper but couldn’t open it, even with coaching. They opened it for her and showed her the clothes — sweaters and turtlenecks so she can’t unbutton them. And one had chickadees and pretty blue birds on pine boughs. I think she liked them.

We sang too, several carols, but she barely responded. She’d always loved carols. I’d like to think she still does, even though she can’t tell us anymore.

After goodbye, we went on to watch “March of the Penguins,” another of my gifts, at grandpa’s duplex. We hadn’t gotten snow, but we saw plenty of it then, as we marveled at the story of ongoing life in one of the world’s most sterile of places.

THE METROPLEX, TEXAS — The delightful toucan eyeing us through branches makes up for Birds of the World’s dull, if accurate, title. Accuracy is a gladness in itself, however, and it is not one we are allowed to enjoy much beyond the book’s cover. On the title page, the publisher’s own name is misspelled. The photograph credit for “Sun Concure” made me wince (it should be “Sun Conure”), but who reads photograph credits anyway? The misplaced hyphen in “Gray-crowned Crane” is probably worrisome only to sticklers, but for the record the bird’s crown is not gray. It is the Gray Crowned-Crane.

But two blatant misidentifications are completely unforgivable. Page 261 features what appears to be a Spotted Towhee — blithely labeled “Eastern Towhee.” The bird’s breast feathers seem to cover the base of its primaries, so I suppose it is possible that the bird is a hybrid, or a heavily white-spotted Eastern Towhee, if such a bird exists. Be that as it may, I can think of no excuses for the “White-throated Sparrow” on 259. The bird is a first-winter White-crowned Sparrow, as American birder of even the lowest caliber could have told the Parragon editors.

I am not up to speed on the identification of antpittas, Eurasian emberizids and finches, or broadbills. Can I trust the text to label those birds accurately?

For those able to overlook glaring textual errors, the book’s photographs are deeply rewarding. Some catch their subjects in motion, looking so lifelike that we expect the penguin to leap into the icy sea as soon as we turn the page. Others capture intimate details in the lives of common birds: the Common Treecreeper grasps an assortment of insects in its bill, and the Chimney Swift rests with its spiny-looking young on a nest cemented by strands of hardened saliva.

Many photographs are strikingly composed, like the flurry of Cattle Egrets and the “two-headed” Masked Booby. Many are so close and crisp that each feather can be studied and admired in its own right.

Purists may be disappointed that several birds were photographed in captivity. Victoria Crowned-Pigeon, Brown Kiwi, Scarlet Ibis, and Rothschild’s Myna all display prominent bands on their legs. For some species this is understandable, but the shot of flamingos is so unimaginative that it looks like it came from a small city zoo.

Nevertheless, the book presents birds many American birders have never even heard of: Green-and-gold Tanager, Asian Paradise-Flycatcher, Rifleman, Oilbird, Hoatzin, and Red-legged Seriema. Each is beautiful and fascinating in its own way, and this in the end is the book’s triumph. It is a breathtaking introduction to the world’s birds, and when placed on the coffee table, it could lure unsuspecting guests into a whole world they never knew existed.

“Wow, these birds are awesome!”

“Yeah … say, what are you doing Saturday morning, about 6:00 a.m.?”

Now all I need is a coffee table.

Interestingly, “Birds of the World” represents a small victory for the electronic age. Most of the photographs are taken (with permission) from photolibrary.com. Online content is now flowing onto the printed page, instead of from the printed page only. Anyone interested in pre-ordering your bound and printed copy of “Search and Serendipity: The First 10 Years”?

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?

LONGVIEW, TEXAS — My “Birds of New Guinea” arrived today. I looked at it instead of studying like crazy for my modern poetry exam. (I did eventually study, and I think I did fine.) The color plates of hundreds and hundreds of species are breathtaking and enthralling. Birds of paradise, fruit-doves, lorikeets, fairy-wrens, cassowaries, bat hawks — wow!

I’m at a complete loss. I don’t know how to absorb so much information. I’ve worked on North American birds for years, and I’ve gotten them down pretty well. I know how they fit together, and how they are different. I can arrange them in an logical and orderly fashion in my mind. I know what’s a sparrow, what’s a vireo, what’s a buteo. But now I’m left to thumb through pages helplessly as my mind tries unsuccessfully to process “coucal,” “cuckoo-dove,” and “melidectes.” This is one exam I can’t cram for. It’ll take work, and it will be frustrating sometimes. It takes time to learn so many new families, genera, and species. I’m also unsure how I’ll be able to balance my work and my desire to bird. I’ll probably have to ignore birds sometimes, or at least be content with brief and unsatisfactory looks. But it’s going to be incredible all the same! I’m so excited.

Oh, on the way to class or somewhere, I saw my FOS Chimney Swifts. I heard their twittering and looked up to see their stiff fluttering flight. I’m glad they’re back.