For those maybe not familiar with how he does this: the value of the tree is not in its wood but in its beauty. The value of the birds is not in their keeping but in their freedom.
The elves here find joy in the freedom of things rather than in the control of them.
A thread through all of Tolkien’s works is that desiring control is the root cause of moral corruption. Evil comes from desiring power over others.
Anyway that’s why I think Tolkien would have been okay with [redacted for legal reasons] with a shotgun.
