In this chapter in the book "The Ecological Importance of Mixed Severity Fires: Nature's Phoenix, the authors do not provide an encyclopedic review of the more than 450 published papers that describe some kind of effect of fire on birds. Instead, they chose to highlight underappreciated principles or lessons that emerge from selected studies of birds in ecosystems born of, and maintained by, mixed- to high-severity fire. Those lessons show how important and misunderstood basic fire ecology is when it comes to managing fire-dependent forest lands and shrublands, and the lessons apply to all fire-dependent ecosystems that have historically experienced severe fire—fires that are severe enough to stimulate an ecological succession of plant communities (as described in Chapter 1). They also focus their attention primarily on conifer forest ecosystems of the western United States because they undergo an amazing transformation following severe fire and because studies of these systems clearly reveal how birds evolved with, and now require, severe fire.