The highest aim of music is the glory of God.
Although music can be used to express many different things, praising God is its highest achievement. If this is so in the music of people, can we not say that bird song glorifies God? The beauty of it attests to the existence of the Creator of these little creatures. Song birds are equipped with perfect pitch, double voice boxes, exquisite timbre, and enough singing talent to make the most highly trained musicians envious. Who gave the world the wonderful gift of song birds? God did, of course!
In the 1800's, a man named Simon Pease Cheney wrote Wood Notes Wild, a little book of his notations of bird song, collected from his observations.
What qualified him to write a book about birdsong?
He had been a singing-school master for 50 years. He had lived for 30 years in an area populated by birds; he observed and recorded (in hand-written music notation) what he heard in New England. To him, "....the voices of the wood and field were as familiar as those of his own family." (Wood Notes Wild, 1891).
Simon Cheney sadly bought into the idea of Darwinian evolution popular in his time. However, he had this to say in opposition to some controversial beliefs about music: "A modern English writer says....'there is no music in Nature, neither melody nor harmony.' What is melody but a succession of simple sounds differing in length and pitch? How then can it be said that bird-songs are not music? A melody may be of greater or less length. I think we shall find that the little bird-songs are melodies, containing something of all we know of melody, and more too; and this in most exquisite forms....." (Wood Notes Wild, 1891).
He also said, "To say that the music of the birds is similar in structure to our own, is not to say that they use no intervals less than our least. They do this, and I am well aware that not all of their music can be written. Many of their rhythmical and melodic performances are difficult of comprehension, to say nothing of committing them to paper. The song of the bobolink is an instance in point. Indeed, one cannot listen to any singing-bird without hearing something inimitable and indescribable. Who shall attempt a description of the tremolo in the song of the meadow lark, the graceful shading and sliding of the tones of the thrushes? But these ornaments, be they never so profuse, are not the sum and substance of bird-songs; and it is in the solid body of the song that we find relationship to our own music. (Wood Notes Wild, 1891).
With the benefit of technology, we actually don't have to go outside now to research birdsong. Databases of bird recordings are readily available. Others have done field work for us; we can now very easily quote birds in our compositions!
Here is an example of one such database of bird sounds and songs: www.xeno-canto.org