I have to say that while I enjoyed this story, I was not quite as enamoured with it as some of the other forum posters. To start with the good, however, I really did like the main protagonist. He was a really well written, three dimensional character. His decency as a human being shines through, and he can never resist the urge to help someone - dead knight, lady, injured birds - no matter how much he knows he'll regret the consequences. It also blinds him to the duplicity of others until way too late. And then, I got the feeling that he enjoys grumbling about the birds way more than he is actually bothered by them. I really, really loved this character, both as a protagonist but also as an example of good writing.
Where the story fell short for me, however, is the plot. Specifically, I had two major problems with it. The first is that I didn't understand how the murder took place. It was established that you cannot enter the town without passing a guarded gate. But yet, the lord seemed to be able to be able to enter town, get a ring from his wife, and leave town dying without anyone seeing him. Or did she somehow kill him on the way to town? But if so, why did she do it so close to the town? And if he was riding to town, why tie the spell to his signet ring, which I assume he wouldn't be wearing on the road? I'm either missing something here, or the murder itself makes no sense whatsoever.
The second problem I had was the behavior of the birds, especially at the end. The narrator gets the power to talk to birds, but he also seems to have the superpower of letting birds around him act non-bird like. Hitchcock movies aside, birds of different species don't cooperate in this manner, especially if they don't share an interest. I can buy that the Hawk would remain loyal to its master, and why the crows would feel some sort of fondness for the narrator just because they know he can speak with them. What led the other birds to risk their lives to help?