The truth of the matter is, the birds could very well live without us, but many -- perhaps all -- of us would find life incomplete, indeed almost intolerable without the birds.
Interpretation
Birds enrich our lives, even though they do not depend on us for survival.
This quote reflects the deep intrinsic connection between humans and birds, emphasizing how birds enhance our existence and aesthetic experience of nature. While birds thrive in their own right, humans often feel a sense of incompleteness without their presence, highlighting the importance of nature in our lives.
In practice
During a speech on conservation at the local environmental meeting.
Birds ... are sensitive indicators of the environment, a sort of "ecological litmus paper," ... The observation and recording of bird populations over time lead inevitably to environmental awareness and can signal impending changes.
Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.
The philosophy that I have worked under most of my life is that the serious study of natural history is an activity which has far-reaching effects in every aspect of a person's life. It ultimately makes people protective of the environment in a very committed way. It is my opinion that the study of natural history should be the primary avenue for creating environmentalists.
Birding, after all, is just a game. Going beyond that is what is important.
Give me strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is.
The public must learn how to cherish the nobler and rarer plants, and to plant the aloe, able to wait a hundred years for it's bloom, or it's garden will contain, presently, nothing but potatoes and pot-herbs.
My argument has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.
The message is simple: love and conserve our wildlife.
A week of sweeping fogs has passed over and given me a strange sense of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day, yet I can see nothing anywhere but a mass of wet rock, a strip of surf, and then a tumult of waves.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
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