For sixty years I have been a bird watcher. More than that, really; I have been fascinated by these ephemeral creatures that sometimes seem more of air than of flesh, whether wild geese parting the sky in great clanging chains or tiny wrens invisibly singing in a clump of grass.

As a child on a back-country homestead, my dog and I invested countless hours in simply sitting still in the woods, waiting for birds to give away the locations of their nests. But we never disturbed those nests. There was no egg collecting. It was joy enough just to see them.

On my few overgrown acres in the Fraser Valley I have recorded 120 species of birds in the last two decades, from bald eagles and great horned owls to rufous hummingbirds and ruby-crowned kinglets, ruffed grouse to wood-ducks. I deeply treasure my autographed copy of a bird identification book by the late Roger Tory Peterson, greatest ornithologist of the twentieth century.

We imagine that angels have wings because for centures we have been impressed by the beauty and mystery of bird flight. Birds have always represented the rise of earthly things to Heaven. They symbolize hope, freedom, peace and Man's immortal soul.

Would we be hurtling around the world today, packed into swift jetliners, eating plasticized garbage and dodging each other's elbows on our way to places we think we want to visit, if birds had not inspired us to unlock some of the secrets of flying? Birds control pestiferous bugs and rodents for us, soothe us with their singing, decorate our gardens with their multi-hued plumage, and kindle the purest passion of lovers and poets. Domesticated, they feed us with their flesh and their eggs, warm and comfort us with their feathers, and amuse us with their caged antics. Some even talk to us.

In return, in our warm human way, we kill them--deliberately and incidentally, by the million, for fun and profit. We shoot them, trap them, net them. We poison them with chemicals and the foulness of our communities and factories. We lock them into cages where they will never take a free step, test their wings or see the sun. We keep pet cats to accelerate the maiming and slaying of the wild and free ones.

Consider the Stephen Island 'Wren, a tiny bird that, in the 1890s, was found only on Stephen Island, a one-square-mile, almost uninhabited dot in the sea near New Zealand. The little bird, which lived in holes in the rocks, seldom flew. Instead, it scurried mouse-like across the ground as it hunted insects. It was discovered by Henry Travers, who was appointed lighthouse keeper in 1894.

One day his cat left a dead wren on his doorstep and, thinking it looked unusual, he sent it by the weekly supply boat to a noted ornithologist in New Zealand. After a week or so the supply boat brought an excited reply from the bird expert, saying he was arranging to visit Stephen Island because the wren was a wonderful discovery--a new species, unique in all the world!

But that very day Henry's busy cat left yet another tiny wren corpse on the doorstep. It was the last of its kind. The Stephen Island Wren was extinct, only a few weeks after its discovery.

As our technology progresses, however, new obliteration speed records soon may be set. Clear-cutting vast stretches of forest, draining marshlands, spraying pesticides on far-reaching fields and dumping shiploads of oil into the seas are among the major ways in which we destroy great numbers of birds. European sportsmen shoot millions of migrating songbirds each year, and the humble sparrow is on the menu of millions in parts of Asia. Even such a praiseworthy organization as Ducks Unlimited exists chiefly because of human urges to kill and cripple waterfowl with scatterguns.

The fabled feeding frenzies of sharks are Oxford tea parties compared with man's wars against the passenger pigeon, the great auk or migrating robins in Italy. There are many tales of whole breeding colonies of flightless, helpless seabirds clubbed to death by good Christian men exhibiting all the moral grace of weasels in a chickenhouse.

But against this bloody backdrop of destruction, a positive force is emerging. Since I first was captured by the sight of an osprey plummeting into the lake in front of my boyhood home and the call of a catbird, birding has grown into one of the fastest-growing pursuits in the developed world. Millions of people take part in annual surveys and other organized activities aimed largely at protecting and enhancing populations of wild birds. Millions of householders put out food for birds in winter and sometimes all year round. Untold numbers of gardens are being designed or altered to provide natural food and shelter for birds, and international societies campaign to save bird habitat and to limit the use of poisonous sprays.

The growing armies of bird enthusiasts may not yet be able to stem the tide of industrial greed, heedless urban sprawl, over-use of chemicals, ruptured oil tankers, blood lust and despotism that continues to eat away the great forests and wetlands of birds and other wildlife, but at least they are making sure that the world knows about it.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then blessed is the eye of the birder. But if you would give the birds a break by feeding them, do not take the decision lightly. You, too, will end up dealing them death, especially in the colder climates, if you begin supplying food in autumn and winter and then stop before spring is well on the way. You can build them houses, help protect them from cats, landscape your lot with trees and plants that offer food and shelter.

And remember that birds of prey have a special kind of beauty and as much right to pursue their instinctive lives as any other creature.

Do not condemn the hawk that now and then comes to the songbirds like the shadow of death. Sudden death hovers over us all.

Tony Eberts is a columnist and environmentalist whose 40 years with The Vancouver Province newspaper won him much esteem and respect. abeberts@telus.net