Of all the articles in the recent Audubon Magazine devoted to the concept of Birds Matter, this is our favorite. According to writer Scott Weidensaul, it's all very nice to say that birds are good environmental indicators and that birding is good economics and all that, but the better reason is just this:

Even the smallest bird is a miracle that needs no further vindication or defense—which by its very existence demands our attention and respect. Remember this: Each of the birds that makes the leap into the void is a treasure. Remember this: There are no trash birds. Every one of the hundreds of virtually identical immature sharp-shinned hawks that comes down the ridge on a long, cold October day; each of the innumerable song sparrows sulking in the hedgerow like brown mice; every single one of the great horde of mud-gray semipalm sandpipers out on that shimmering tidal flat, as alike as photocopies—every damned one of them is of great and surpassing worth.

What he said.

(Broad-winged Hawk by Peter LaTourrette)