“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
– Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 10. The Finches neighbor Miss Maudie Atkinson offers this wisdom to Scout who queries her father’s instruction to Jem not to shoot his air rifle at mockingbirds. Mockingbirds are innocents that must be protected.