I came late to the love of birds. For years I saw them only as a tremor at the edge of vision. They know suffering and joy in simple states not possible for us. Their lives quicken and warm to a pulse our hearts can never reach. They race to oblivion. They are old before we have finished growing.J.A. Baker, The Peregrine (New York: New York Review Books, 2005; 1967), p. 10.