The days are getting shorter and cooler and on Friday I saw my first flock of birds heading south to play shuffleboard for the winter. In honor of our feathered friends I present these songs by and about birds.

Love Battery “White Bird” (It’s A Beautiful Day)
No sappy hippie violins here. It’s all aggressive guitars and it sounds real good.

Tindersticks “Mockin’ Bird” (Tom Waits)
This is one of the breeziest Tom Waits covers you’ll ever hear. Even though the singer is complaining about a bird mocking him with its song, the tune sounds almost chipper. I found this song when I went to my favorite used record store and left with two different Tom Waits tribute CDs.

Andrew Bird “The Giant Of Illinois” (The Handsome Family)
It’s hard to begrudge Andrew Bird his popularity with the Pitchfork crowd. He’s an immense talent and deserves all the success he’s enjoying these days. But it’s sure messed things up for me. I used to see Andrew Bird play for free at street fairs and for cheap at dive bars around Chicago in the late 90s. Now it’s an expensive ticket to see him play in big venues if you can get in at all. But I’m not bitter.

Here Mr. Bird covers a song from one of my favorite songwriting duos, the husband-and-wife team of Brett and Rennie Sparks. They apparently wrote this song after reading some tourist brochures for the Lincoln memorial sites in Springfield, IL.

The Neville Brothers “Bird On A Wire” (Leonard Cohen)
I love the Neville Brothers but Aaron Neville gets on my nerves. He seems incapable of figuring out what songs best suit his singing style. Not every song cries out for a trembling falsetto, Aaron. Even with Aaron’s contribution this version is a winner thanks to his brothers’ smoking rhythm section.

Tex Perkins & Megan Washington “This Little Bird” (J.D. Loudermilk)
This song comes from the soundtrack of the recently released movie Beautiful Kate. I haven’t seen the movie but I like the idea of a story about growing up in Idaho being reset in Australia. Bonus points to Mr. Perkins and Ms. Washington for covering a J.D. Loudermilk song that’s not “Tobacco Road.”