19. 10 Songs about Birds

Flightless Bird, American Mouth - Iron and Wine
Hummingbird - Wilco
Birds - Neil Young
And Your Bird Can Sing or Blackbird - The Beatles
I'm so Lonesome I Could Cry - Hank Williams
Love minus Zero/No Limit - Bob Dylan
Black-winged Bird - The Cake Sale
Bird on a Wire - Leonard Cohen
The Birds Will Sing For Us - Ed Harcourt
Birdhouse in Your Soul - They Might Be Giants

There's something running through American music about ravens, I think with Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven' as its starting point. The NFL team The Baltimore Ravens have three mascots, called Edgar, Allen and Poe.
I can't, in truth, say I'm wild about birds. I couldn't tell many from another, and I never watch nature programmes on TV.
When I was running on Clapham Common, I was listening to Roots Manuva's song 'Stone the Crows' and I was repeatedly divebombed by a crow. That's my best story about birds.
Some of them are scary bastards.

A sickly sun leans on the city's
suited heroes stuck picking up
old coins on pavements long discarded.
I'm squinting, out for new ideas
but the same unconnected numbers
invade and keep me up all night.

One swallow, that's all I ask for,
one swallow on a damaged statue
to ease me to untroubled sleep.
One kingfisher, whatever it loooks like
on a mercury day in the last good
summer of your last good century.

I'm sorry I ever envied you, now
you're scared to meet the crow's challenge
as you make your vain heavy steps,
buying time and imagining traps -
this common land serves as prison to your
ridiculous dreams of big numbers.

On the island, you say you heard
the city swan sing his final song and,
these times, I can't but be relieved that
My headphones, deep down in my ears
play the country soul music too loud
to hear a thing but numbers running.