Whether you are looking for a cute bird caption for an Instagram photo or just inspiration in your daily birding, we’ve rounded up a whole flock of famous bird quotes, birding proverbs and captions that will leave you smiling.
Joy of Birds
Every bird, every tree, every flower reminds me what a blessing and privilege it is just to be alive. — Marty Rubin
Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird? — Sir David Attenborough
The presence of a single bird can change everything for one who appreciates them. ― Julie Zickefoose, Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven. — Emily Dickinson
Feeding Birds
I don’t feed the birds because they need me; I feed the birds because I need them. ― Kathi Hutton
It’s reassuring to know that the garden birds are there, even when I’m not. ― Joe Harkness, Bird Therapy
Birds and Singing
My heart is like a singing bird. — Christina Rossetti
Birds chirping around you is a beautiful realization that life is incredibly good. Let this sound be a gentle break in your routine. ― Hiral Nagda
The sound of birds stops the noise in my mind. — Carly Simon
I don’t ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful. — Pete Hamill
I would like to paint the way a bird sings. — Claude Monet
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think. — Rumi
Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them? — Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
A bird does not sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. — Maya Angelou
Birds chirping around you is a beautiful realization that life is incredibly good. Let this sound be a gentle break in your routine. — Hiral Nagda
I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. — E.E. Cummings
Birds and Flying
Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings. — Victor Hugo
Tame birds sing of freedom. Wild birds fly. — John Lennon
Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works. — Alma Gluck
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. — William Blake
A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but on her own wings. — Anonymous
The construction of an airplane is simple compared with the evolutionary achievement of a bird. If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes. — Charles Lindbergh
Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers. — Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Birds learn how to fly, never knowing where the flight will take them. — Mark Nepo
Birdwatching
Sometimes I think that the point of birdwatching is not the actual seeing of the birds, but the cultivation of patience. — Lynn Thomson, Birding with Yeats: A Mother’s Memoir
In order to see birds, it is necessary to become a part of the silence. — Robert Lynd
I think the most important quality in a birdwatcher is a willingness to stand quietly and see what comes. Our everyday lives obscure a truth about existence – that at the heart of everything there lies a stillness and a light. ― Lynn Thomson, Birding with Yeats: A Mother’s Memoir
Some people are very competitive in their birding. Maybe they’ll die happy, having seen a thousand species before they die, but I’ll die happy knowing I’ve spent all that quiet time being present. ― Lynn Thomson, Birding with Yeats: A Mother’s Memoir
Birds will give you a window, if you allow them. They will show you secrets from another world– fresh vision that, though it is avian, can accompany you home and alter your life. They will do this for you even if you don’t know their names– though such knowing is a thoughtful gesture. They will do this for you if you watch them. ― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds
You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush. ― John Burroughs, Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and Other Papers
Whenever I renew a commitment to studying raptors or gulls or crows or the birds in my backyard, more are given, more show themselves. Our efforts are rewarded, our studies are enhanced in experience. I cannot explain this, and I am reluctant to sound to woo-woo but we can take this as confidently as if it came from the Oracle at Delphi: the more we prepare, the more we are “allowed” somehow to see. ― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness
Birds, Faith and Spirituality
God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest. — Danish proverb
Birds were created to record everything. They were not designed just to be beautiful jewels in the sky, but to serve as the eyes of heaven. — Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings. — J.M. Barrie, The Little White Bird
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark. — Rabindranath Tagore
Wherever there are birds, there is hope. ― Mehmet Murat Ildan
Birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain. — Douglas Coupland, Life After God
Famous Bird Quotes about Specific Species
The bluebird carries the sky on his back. — Henry David Thoreau
Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. — Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
The voice of the duck is the glory of the marshes. — Sumerian proverb
What, is the jay more precious than the lark, Because his feathers are more beautiful? — William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
August is the month of the high-sailing hawks. The hen hawk is the most noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of these long, warm days. He is a bird of leisure and seems always at his ease. How beautiful and majestic are his movements! — John Burroughs
You could do worse than to spend your days staring at blue jays. ― Julie Zickefoose, Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay
That little owl with a call as steady as my heartbeat was telling anyone who would listen, ‘I am here.’ We were listening. We’re listening still. ― Heather Durham, Going Feral: Field Notes on Wonder and Wanderlust
I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. — Henry David Thoreau
The Peregrine sees and remembers patterns we do not know exist: the neat squares of orchard and woodland, the endlessly varying quadrilateral shapes of fields. ― J.A. Baker, The Peregrine
Bird Proverbs
Birds of a feather flock together.
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
A bird does not change its feathers because the weather is bad. (Nigerian proverb)
A bird is known by his feathers. (Yiddish proverb)
Better is one bird in the hand than ten in the air. (Dutch proverb)
Birds of a feather flock together.
Deal gently with the bird you mean to catch.
Each bird loves to hear himself sing. (Italian proverb)
Fine feathers make fine birds.
If the sky falls, we shall catch larks.
It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest.
It is the early bird that gets the worm.
No need to teach an eagle to fly. (Greek proverb)
One bird in hand is better than ten birds on the tree. (Egyptian proverb)
People live like birds in the woods: When the time comes, each must take flight. (Chinese proverb)
The bird loves her own nest.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Instagram Bird Captions
Gone flying.
Me doing me.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way (for the shot of the bird trying to get that last seed out of the feeder)
The early bird gets the worm but the late sleeper gets the sunflower seed!
Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.
How did I get up here?
Just doin’ bird stuff.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease. (for the photo of the squawking blue jay at the empty feeder)
Every bird has its day.
Just hanging out with my feathered friends ❤ #birdsofinstagram
Our feathered friends are back at the birdfeeder! #nature
Necessity is the mother of invention.
It’s time to wake up.
I’m singing like nobody’s listening.
A picture is worth a thousand cheeps.
Fortune favors the bold and the boldest bird.
Good things come to those who wait—unless a squirrel arrives first.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. (Perfect for that photo of a bird returning during spring migration.)
The longest mile is the last mile home. (another great Instagram bird caption for a bird returning after a winter away)
A leopard doesn’t change its spots—but a bird changes out his feathers. (For that cute shot of the molting bird.)
Beggars can be choosers if you’re not going to give us the good seed.
One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. (for that photo of the ground feeding birds eating the seed discarded from above)
Appearances can be deceptive.
The bird seed is always greener on the other side.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. (an Instagram caption for the squirrel maneuvering to get into the squirrel-proof feeder)
Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Haste makes waste.