" An almost invisible bird, a small piece of hopping dirt, purposed along the edge of the flower bed, eyeing for beauty or looking for worms. Olivia watched it as she walked with her husband toward the yew and puzzling statue. We count those birds as nothing, she thought, the small dun-colored ones, and prefer to keep our wonder for the spectral glory of cardinals, or the ungainly grace of cranes. Goldfinches and even jays delight us, but are they so different from these common little brown birds which we think of as vermin? Astonishing accidents of pigment, size, plumage: Why do they elicit or wonder? "

― , The Garden Party