“I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in Walden (1854), “and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn.” Such moments come to one’s life, weightless yet powerful, then fly. The artists whose works are chosen for the internationally renowned exhibition “Birds in Art” both honor and immortalize our interactions with birds. Now in its 48th year at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, this year’s show includes 112 artists from around the world. The mediums are many—oil, acrylic, linocut, drawing, collage, and sculpture in all kinds of materials—and the styles and species on view are diverse. Wonderful! —Laura Jacobs