[Avodah] kinnim

[saul mashbaum]

RSSimon:
>>
I've learned that the blood of an animal chatas gets thrown "above 
the line" of the mizbeach, and for an olah, below the line.

Now in Kinnim, I learn that it's the opposite for a bird chatas and olah.

Any thoughts as to why?  Or deeper significance?

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RElozor Reich has beaten me to the citation of RSRHirsch I was going to make (see RSRH's commentary to Vayikra 1:14). I think it's fruitful to bring here some more of RSRH's ideas about the symbolic significance of the avian sacrifices from RSRH's commentary there.
Birds are often depicted in Tanach as helpless, pitiful creatures, and the treatment of the bird in the sacrificial procedures reflcts this concept: the bird sacrifice receives rough  treatment which in many ways contrasts with the corresponding much more elgant treatment of animals. Unlike animals which are shechted with knives, birds are subject to melika, in which their necks are crushed directly by the hands of the kohen, a much cruder procedure. The animal is carefully sliced - nituach; the bird is ripped apart - shisuah. The innards of the animal are removed with care and offered on the mizbeach; those of the bird are thrown onto the floor of the azara.    
The bringer of a bird sacrifice is to be seen as one besest with profound troubles which he is essentially helpless to overcome; his life is a life of want and suffering, a miserable existence . One may well think that such a person has no place in the Beit HaMikdash at all; let the prosperous and successful bring animals as sacrifices, and the nebishes, as it were, stay away. One may even think that the great troubles a person is  afflicted with show his essential unworthiness. The bird sacrifice shows that this is not the case, and is an affirmation of the fundamental worth of the unsuccessful, the weak or ill, perhaps the handicapped, in a word, the suffering. It is the classic "accessibility" sacrifice, opening the BhM to the unfortunate.
There are elements of RSRH's commentary, including a phrase which in Hebrew translation is "goral ha-sevel" the fate of suffering, which makes me think that he is hinting that the defenseless suffering bird represents the plight of very many Jews throughout history.  Helpless, despised, beset by enemies much stronger than they, the Jews suffered greatly. Their suffering was interpreted by some of their enemies as a proof of their rejection by the Lord. This is certainly not so; some fulfill their destiny by their very suffering. 
Saul Mashbaum
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