Date: 8/26/25 2:11 pm From: Todd Ballinger <todd.ballinger...> Subject: Just Like That Bird--Dylan's Birds
Bob Dylan may not be submitting personal checklists to eBird, but he has
apparently been making many references to birds in his songs over the last
60 years. He turned 84 this past May. For those who listen to Bob Dylan, or
just sometimes think birds make for good analogies/metaphors, here's an
article I've enjoyed reading recently that combines the two:
[excerpt] "If you’ll pardon the avian pun, I’m ducking out of overviews and
grand comparisons to focus on one small but typically interesting aspect of
his [Dylan's] enormous body of work: the invoking of birds — birds in
general and birds of particular species — and to consider how he deploys
them.
"I’m prompted by the happy way the white dove with which he flew into so
many people’s consciousness back near the starting-point — *Yes, ’n’ how
many seas must a white dove sail / Before she sleeps in the sand?* —
returns on his most recent album, again invoked as a symbol of peace: *If I
had the wings of a snow-white dove / I’d preach the gospel, the gospel of
love.*
Having had that prompt, I suppose I assumed there’d be the handful of bird
allusions recurrently in my head and perhaps as many again. How wrong I
was: there are dozens!"
