Nowadays, if chanticleer calls to mind anything in particular, except wrath at his too early rising to adore the god of day, it is the spirit of boastfulness and “cocksureness”; while his humble mate represents maternal cares carried to the extreme of fussiness.

The names of a good many birds serve as synonyms of prevailing ideas, or become figures of speech, without having a special myth or story behind them. Thus the words eagle and falcon convey to the listener the notion of nobility in power, while hawk simply means fierceness, with somewhat of prying, detective skill. Owl provokes in the imagination a rather smiling picture of solemn pretence of wisdom—a reputation, by the way, almost wholly due to the little European screech-owl’s accidental association with Pallas Athene. Swallow suggests spring all over the world; goose and gull connote easy credulity and foolishness; vulture and raven, rapine and cruelty; parrot senseless chatter or the lavish repetition of another’s ideas or sayings; cuckoo, poaching on another man’s domestic preserves; and so on down to the stork, which in Germany symbolizes filial piety because of its fancied solicitude toward aged storks, and which children are taught to believe brings babies from the fountain to their mothers’ laps. The Chinese and Japanese peasantry hold the Mandarin duck in high esteem as a model of conjugal virtues, because it is said to mate for life, and Hindoos feel the same toward their (sarus) crane—a bird that figures extensively in the legendary lore of both China and Japan. Figures of the crane are found decorating bridal attire in Japan, and this bird is commended to womankind generally in Nippon as an example of motherhood to be emulated. “In this respect it is like the pheasant, which is said to stay by her young during a grass-fire, covering them with her outstretched wings until, together, they perish in the flames; for in a similar way the crane shields her young from the bitter cold of the winter snows.”

In ancient Egypt the plume of the ostrich, “on account of the mathematical equality of the opposing barbs in point of length—a peculiarity not present in the primary feathers of any other bird with which the Egyptians were acquainted—was regarded as the sacred symbol of justice.” Osiris was represented with two ostrich plumes in his crown. Says Dr. Cyrus Adler: “The Egyptian considered the hoopoe as symbolical of gratitude because it repays the early kindness of its parents in their old age by trimming their wings and bringing them food when they are acquiring new plumage. The Arabs call it ‘doctor,’ believing it to possess marvellous medicinal qualities, and they use its head in charms and incantations.”