Many of us have sung the songs of Fanny Crosby, many times not even looking to see who the writer was. When I

Ring-necked Ducks by Mike Bader

started looking for Hymns that mentioned something about birds, I was amazed at how ofter she wrote about birds. I was up to 44 hymns and realized that 10 of them were by Fanny Crosby. I am still searching and am sure she has more. What is so amazing is that she could not see the birds, but she must have been exposed to their songs and sounds. I told my husband that I bet she was one “fantastic birdwatcher.” Those of us who can see, spend our time trying to figure who’s who among the birds by sight. Many birders do learn the sounds of birds and are able to make identifications that way. Most are aware that when one of our senses (sight in her case) is lost, the others senses many time greatly improve. Not only her hearing, but in Fanny Crosby, her ability to write hymns was truly a God given talent. She was blinded at 6 weeks by a doctors mistake, yet she wrote over 8,000 hymns.

Fanny Crosby, born on March 24, 1823, and in her early forties began to write gospel song lyrics. Before writing the text to her songs, she first knelt in prayer to ask for divine guidance. She once said, “It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.”

When she died, her tombstone carried the words, “Aunt Fanny” and “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine”. Eliza Hewitt memorialized Fanny’s passing in a poem:

Away to the country of sunshine and song,
Our songbird has taken her flight,
And she who has sung in the darkness so long
Now sings in the beautiful light.

(From Inspirational American Women)

Cyberhymnal-Fanny Crosby has a nice page that gives some information about her. It has a list of 510 of the hymns she wrote, many with a link to the words and the music.
Cyberhymnal
Fanny Crosby at Wikipedia
Handfuls of Purpose from the Poetry of Fanny Crosby

Here is a list of the songs by Fannie Crosby that mentions “birds” in some way or another:
As The Bird Flies Home
Blessed Are They That Believe
Our Festive Song
Praise The Giver of All
Speed Away
Speed For Thy Life

(Under Construction)

The YouTube by Creative Quotations below has some of Fanny’s Quotations: