Birds & Ornithology Educational Posters, Art Prints & Charts
for the science and social studies classrooms, home schoolers, theme decor.

Birds belong to the class of Aves, warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered vertebrates with forelimbs modified to form wings. Ornithology (Gk. ornis = bird + logos = word), a branch of zoology, is concerned with the scientific study of birds. Birds are very important to humans: wild and domesticated fowl provide meat, eggs and feathers; falcons have been trained for hunting, cormorants for fishing, and homing pigeons were used for quick communication.

Bird images and characteristics are present in world mythologies and traditions - Noah understood the great flood was over when a dove returned with an olive branch, the owl is associated with wisdom, and the phoenix is a legendary bird symbolic of immortality and resurrection.

• “I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.” ~ Joseph Addison
• “One swallow does not make a summer.” ~ Aristotle
• “No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.” ~ William Blake
• “When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!” ~ William Blake
• “The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds – how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives – and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!” ~ John Burroughs
• “I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.” ~ Emily Dickinson
• “I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, when his wing is bruised and his bosom sore; when he beats his bars and he would be free, it is not a carol of joy or glee, but a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core.” ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar
• “You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing — that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” ~ Richard Feynman
• “You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren.” ~ William Henry Hudson
• “I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
• “Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.” ~ Izaak Walton