The Nature of Birds

Having grown old, the eagle's eyes grow dim and his wings grow heavy; he goes to a spring and, as he rises into the air, his wings are scorched by the sun, and he looks up, and having immediately descended to the spring for a third time, he is baptized and renewed; therefore they say he points to the psalm: 'Your youth shall be renewed like the eagle's' (Psalm 103:5). But the vulture has a half-year gestation, and does not know the intercourse of a male, and lives a hundred years. He dwells upon the heights and the clouds, and no one knows where he makes his habitation.

And having become pregnant, he goes to India, and having taken the so-called egg-stone, he sits upon it, being seized by pains, and lays it. The stone is round like a nut, and moving it sends out a sound like a bell, from the movement of another stone within. They say the vulture dies when anointed with rose-myrrh; but seeds do not harm him, nor is any living thing crushed, nor does he approach a dead bird because of kinship. However, they say that when men are arrayed for war, he follows them and does not depart, being a scavenger.

The storks, however, arrive at one settlement together and depart from one. The corvids send them forth, and, as is fitting, they ally themselves with them against certain enemies; for they return wounded. But if the stork grows old, he chirps, and his children, surrounding him with their own wings, comfort him, and provide him with plenty of food; and in flight, they carry him from below, and with their own wings they support him on either side. The cranes, however, all fly together equally, and one leads them, and having led for a certain time, having circled above, she hands over the leadership of the way to the one after her.

While one bird sleeps, another circles safely, and when it has cried out having filled the sufficient measure of the interval, it turns to sleep, and another again receives such service. But the genus of owls is sleepless, and sharp of hearing, quickly perceiving those approaching simply, or sensing the onset of attackers. Thus indeed, some enemies, by signs guessing and intending to seize great Rome, these saved themselves by the natural sharpness of sense, handing over the attackers to the guards by a continuous voice.

The kingfisher is a sea-bird, and it sickens the shores of the sea when winter is in the middle. When therefore it is calm, the winds sleep, and the sea has a steady calm for seven days, after the winds previously were violently tossing the sea. When therefore it circles the fledglings again for another seven days, God provides a lull, until it may rear the fledglings. The partridge is deceitful, and jealous, and malicious, working with the hunters toward the hunt. But a stranger stealing, it also causes sickness, and having grown, the fledglings, each according to its kind, flee toward their own, and leave it desolate.

The dove is a shelter. There is indeed a tree in India called peridexion, bearing sweet fruits, and with this the doves are delighted, and dwell upon it. But the dragon is an enemy of the dove, and having become accustomed to the tree, it does not approach; for if the shadow becomes a kind of part of the tree, the dragon flees fearing. And the doves move into that shade of the shadow; for if they are separated from the shade, they are destroyed by the dragon.

What indeed is the nature of the dove worthy of wonder: for it shows its neck, having been caught in sunbeams, variegated with myriad ideas of colors: purple, blue, fiery, coal-like, and pale and red, and with other various colors. The crow and the monadros are fond of their young; for having reared the fledglings, nursing them...