At her Massachusetts home, which she almost never left, Emily Dickinson found birds to be a perfect metaphor for "hope." In San Diego where it seldom rains, heavy dew on new grass is an appropriate metaphor for the kind of optimism Dickinson needed to get through the day. Birds in San Diego do the trick, too.
HOPE
Emily Dickinson     

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.