The Folklore of Birds of Prey: Companions and Competition

Birds of prey have an interesting relationship with humans, having been both competing predators and avian companions for leisure pursuits. They’ve provided omens through the practice of augury, or divination by flight pattern. They appear in heraldic badges or become associated with deities in mythology.

But they also have links with ordinary people who shared the landscape with these fascinating hunters. Who wouldn’t be stunned by the speed of an osprey as it accelerates towards a lake, pulling free of the water with a huge fish in its talons? Or marvel at the flight prowess of a kestrel, hovering in mid-air even in the face of a gale?

Kestrels enjoy the old nickname of ‘windhover’ thanks to their ability to hover, despite weather conditions. They’re also called a ‘stonegall’, which might come from the phrase ‘stand-in-gale’, since they’re able to withstand strong winds (Woolf 2022: 100).

Birds of prey are definitely an impressive sight.

I already have a bonus episode from 2021 on eagles, owls, red kites and falcons, but I am going to revisit falcons and red kites here, while adding some extra folklore about them. There is so much about owls and eagles in the bonus episode that you might want to revisit that, available to Patreon members!

Let’s learn more about the folklore of red kites, falcons, hawks, buzzards, ospreys, and shrikes!

Red Kites

Red Kites were extinct in England until a re-introduction program saw them gain in numbers in both Scotland and England. While they’re considered birds of prey, they’re actually carrion birds. So they eat dead carrion they find, rather than primarily hunting, like eagles. This was part of the cause of their extinction, with both intentional and accidental poisonings causing their demise.

But this tendency to feed on carrion meant they were once seen as inferior birds, spotted feeding on refuse dumps in Shakespeare’s London. So if someone called you a kite, it was a massive insult (McCarthy 2004). Surprisingly, a Royal Decree protected the birds thanks to their scavenging efforts. People believed they helped to clean up the streets.

Thieving Birds

Red Kites were also believed to steal “lesser linen”, otherwise known as underwear, that had been left out to dry. nterestingly, the Red Kites scavenging still goes beyond food, and the RSPB found England flags, magazine pages, tea towels, socks, handbags, frilly knickers, and even lottery tickets lining Red Kite nests. Experts think they may do this to show other Kites that their nest is in use (RSPB 2009).

While we might find this funny, their pilfering nature is also pointed out as a negative trait in Aesop’s Fables. In The Sick Kite, a kite is incredibly ill, and he asks his mother to pray for help for him. His mother replies that she can’t. He’s stolen from the sacrifices to each of the gods so now none of them will help him. Different versions offer slightly different morals, but the end result is much the same. Don’t steal from people who may one day help you.

Yet not everyone had such negative associations with them. In ancient Egypt, the goddess Isis was believed to be able to take the form of a kite to help resurrect the dead. According to Ernest Ingersoll’s Birds in Legend, Fable and Folklore, the sacred scribes of Egypt wore red caps bearing a kite’s feather (1923: 151). This was due to a tradition in which a kite brought the book of religious customs to Thebes.

They are truly magnificent birds, and it’s great to see the reintroduction program apparently working.

Falcons

Peregrine falcons are the fastest bird, hitting 30mph in normal flight, and 70 mph when hunting. When in a dive, they can even reach 200 mph. Like the owl, they’re found on every continent except Antarctica. They largely have a long and distinguished relationship with humans thanks to the practice of falconry.

According to medieval manuscripts, different social ranks were permitted to fly different types of birds of prey. Kings could fly gyrfalcons, princes had peregrines, goshawks were for yeomen, kestrels were for poorer men, and women could fly merlins. That said, given the different hunting styles of birds, it’s unlikely anyone actually stuck to their hierarchy (British Library 2015). People would be more likely to fly the bird that suited the terrain.

We also get various phrases from falconry that we still use today. For example, someone being ‘wrapped around your finger’ or ‘under your thumb’ came from the leather straps the falconer held to keep the bird on their glove. ‘Hoodwinked’ comes from the hood put on the bird to keep it calm. Even ‘fed up’ comes from falconry, referring to birds that won’t hunt because they’re not hungry (Woolf 2022: 98).

Greek diviner and dream interpreter Artemidorus explained falcons represented good, regal wives in dreams (Woolf 2022: 100). It’s perhaps interesting to note that Anne Boleyn’s heraldic badge featured a white falcon, representing nobility and purity (Woolf 2022: 100).

They were hunted during World War 2 due to the threat they posed to carrier pigeons. Egg theft is a perennial threat to the species. Research also showed that the pesticide DDT caused them to lay eggs with incredibly thin shells, but the ban on DDT and various breeding programs has seen the recovery of the species.

Falcons in Myth

Falcons appear in ancient Egyptian, Greek and Norse mythology. In ancient Egypt, Horus is the falcon-headed god of kingship and the sky. The sun is his right eye and the moon is his left. The war god Montu also had a falcon head in some depictions, as well as the head of a bull.

In ancient Greece, falcons were sacred to Apollo, which might explain why Horus became linked with Apollo over time (Ingersoll 1923: 69). Athena is associated with the owl, yet in Homer’s Odyssey, she never takes an owl’s form. She does take the form of a falcon (Armstrong 1959: 120).

In Norse mythology, the goddess Freyja takes the form of a falcon using a falcon-feathered cloak. She’s the goddess of love and fertility, and becoming a falcon lets her travel between worlds.

Hawks and Buzzards

I’ve decided to put these two together, partly because they’re both in the Accipitridae family, and partly because there’s not as much about them otherwise! The names can often be deceptive, too. For example, the Red-tailed Hawk and Harris Hawk from the US are actually buzzards.

Hawks tend to live in woodland and forests, explaining their shorter wings and longer tails, which give them agility when flying between trees. In the UK, we have the goshawk and sparrowhawk, both of which have learned to hunt in cities after we decimated their woodlands (The Falconry Centre, Hagley 2024).

Hearing a buzzard cry apparently foretold rain or a storm (Woolf 2022: 101). Meanwhile, in Norfolk, there would be three deaths in a house if a crow and a cuckoo landed on a roof where a hawk already perched (Armstrong 1959: 204). This use of the hawk in divination has a long history, with ancient augurs also paying attention to what birds did. If an augur spotted a hawk seizing and eating their prey, it foretold death, though deliverance was at hand if the prey escaped (Ingersoll 1923: 213).

At one point there was a belief that cuckoos turned in hawks for the winter, though it’s possible this is because cuckoos do look similar to sparrowhawks (Armstrong 1959: 207). Edward Armstrong also notes an old belief that hoopoes turned into hawks. As both were solar birds in Egypt, the idea of transformation may have travelled to Britain (1959: 208).

Hawks in Myth

Hawks also appear in Norse myth. An all-seeing eagle perched on the top branch of Yggdrasil and Veðrfölnir the hawk sat between his eyes. No one is fully sure what the implication of Veðrfölnir really is. The eagle appears in the Poetic Edda, put together in the 13th century from earlier sources, and the Prose Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century. Veðrfölnir only appears in the latter work. Eagles have tremendous eyesight, so it’s unclear why it would play host to a hawk. Sturluson doesn’t explain it, but John Lindow suggested the hawk was associated with the eagle’s wisdom (2001: 312). Indeed, in one story, Odin takes the form of a hawk to escape Heidrek (Lindow 2001: 140).

Ospreys

Ospreys are magnificent birds of prey that visit the British Isles in summer and spend their winters in West Africa. American listeners, you might know them as fish-hawks. Their fishing prowess led to them being persecuted in earlier centuries in the UK, and they went extinct. Luckily, a pair bred in 1954 near Aviemore, and they’ve slowly made a recovery since then.

Their name comes from ossifraga, which means bonebreaker in Latin, through the bits of bone found in their stomachs.

One old belief sees the osprey charm the fish to offer themselves up for dinner (Woolf 2022: 143). James I attempted to train ospreys to fish for his benefit, but it seems the ospreys were having none of it.

In the Irish legend of the Sons of Tuireann, three sons kill Lugh of the Long Hand’s father. He gives them a list of impossible tasks as a punishment, and they must steal apples from the Garden in the East of the World. They do so in the form of hawks, but the local king’s daughters take the form of ospreys and chase the brothers to the sea. The Sons only escape by becoming swans (Woolf 2022: 144).

Shrikes

This one might seem like a weird inclusion since shrikes aren’t exactly up there with the likes of eagles and owls as majestic birds of prey. They’re also a rare sight, often only seen in autumn or winter.

And it’s probably for the best we don’t see them very often for the fairly gross way they kill their prey. They hunt mice or voles and impale their prey on thorn bushes, often leaving them for some time before they tuck in. Jo Woolf explains they don’t have the right claws to hold onto their food, so they have to make do with the thorns instead (2022: 187).

But their tendency to build up a larder saw them nicknamed the butcher bird. In medieval Britain, people called them the ‘waryangle’, which came from würgengel, or ‘destroying angel’ in German. Chaucer refers to them as waryangles in ‘The Friar’s Tale’.

The red-backed shrike was also referred to as the ‘nine killer’ because some thought it wouldn’t eat any of its kills until it had amassed nine of them (Woolf 2022: 187).

So what do we make of these birds of prey?

It seems birds of prey are more useful than we give them credit for. Some birds of prey are leisure companions. James I tried to train ospreys to fish for him. Other birds are omens because of their use in augury.

Yet the red kite cleans up carrion. They perform this essential duty, but they get reviled for it. And the shrike leaves a larder of dead mammals, but is often not considered a bird of prey.

But humans and birds of prey have had a close relationship throughout the years. In some places, we end up getting put back into contact with each other because they’re losing their habitat, so they have to come and hunt wherever they can. We should probably learn to get on better.

Which is your favourite bird of prey?

References

Armstrong, Edward A. (1959), Folklore of Birds, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

British Library (2015), ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’, Medieval Manuscripts Blog, https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/10/a-kestrel-for-a-knave.html.

The Falconry Centre, Hagley (2024), ‘Buzzards & Hawks’, The Falconry Centre, Hagley, https://thefalconrycentre.co.uk/schools/conservation/diurnal-raptors-overview/buzzards-hawks/.

Ingersoll, Ernest (1923), Birds in legend, fable and folklore, New York: Longmans, Green and Co.

Lindow, John (2001), Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McCarthy, Michael (2004), ‘Love, death and Christmas: the meaning behind Britain’s birds’, The Independent, https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/love-death-and-christmas-the-meaning-behind-britain-s-birds-5356500.html.

RSPB (2009), ‘Kleptomaniacs’, RSPB, https://web.archive.org/web/20090705070555/https://www.rspb.org.uk/news/details.asp?id=tcm:9-220496.

Woolf, Jo (2022), Britain’s Birds: A Treasury of Fact, Fiction & Folklore, London: National Trust Books.