Old SymbolsWhere every symbol began

Bird symbolism

What birds have meant across cultures, from the cardinal as a sign of someone who has died to the owl and the raven as omens.

These eight pages give what birds have meant to named peoples and writers, from the hummingbird of Huitzilopochtli, patron god of the Nahuas, to the cardinal that many people now take as a visit from someone who has died. The older records mostly make a bird an omen or a god’s companion. Several of the best-known modern readings, among them the cardinal as a sign from the dead, the meaning of seeing a hawk and the white feather sent by an angel, could not be traced to any tradition or older writer, and each page says so. The Cherokee material is from the stories and beliefs James Mooney collected between 1887 and 1890, and the pages give it in the past tense, as his record. The other animals are in Animal symbolism.

The cardinal and the redbird

Many people now take the cardinal as a visit from someone who has died. The Farmers’ Almanac says the belief “cannot be traced to a single source”, and the earliest accounts we found are from 2022, in Our State and the Waynesville Mountaineer. The painter Raymond Reid told Our State that his grandmother and mother “always said that cardinals represent a sign from heaven”. The older records say something else. In a Cherokee story Mooney recorded, the redbird is the daughter of the Sun, who escapes from a box on the way home from the Ghost country, and because the box was opened, “now when they die we can never bring them back.” In the North Carolina folk beliefs of the Frank C. Brown collection, a redbird means you will see someone you aren’t expecting, or your sweetheart, and in a few entries that you will hear of a death.

Omens of death, and a guide

The US Fish and Wildlife Service sums up the owl’s two reputations: in Greek mythology it was the symbol of Athena, goddess of wisdom, and the ancient Romans believed owls could tell of a coming death. Athens put the owl on its coins, with Athena’s head on the other side and the letters ΑΘΕ, “of the Athenians”. Mooney recorded that the Cherokee believed owls and other night-crying birds to be embodied ghosts or disguised witches, and in North Carolina “Someone dies every time an owl hoots.” The owl of Halloween has its own page. In Norse society, Store norske leksikon says, the raven was a bird of death and war, probably because ravens eat carrion; Odin’s two ravens are Huginn and Muninn. The Bible gives the raven a kinder part. Noah sends out a raven and then a dove, and ravens bring the prophet Elijah bread and flesh morning and evening. Historic Royal Palaces tells visitors that the kingdom will fall if the ravens leave the Tower of London; Boria Sax writes that the tower ravens are “entirely a Victorian institution”. In Japan the crow is a guide. The Yatagarasu, a great crow, led the legendary first emperor, Jimmu, to present-day Nara, and the three Kumano shrines worship it as a messenger of the god. It is on the emblems of the Japan Football Association.

Birds of the gods

Dumbarton Oaks calls the hummingbird “one of the most sacred animals for the Nahuas, as it symbolized the patron god Huitzilopochtli”, and records the belief that warriors who died in battle were resurrected after four years as hummingbirds or butterflies. The falcon of Horus, the Egyptian god of the sky and of kingship, is on the hawk page, because older English books call it a hawk: Adolf Erman’s handbook, translated in 1907, writes of “Horus as a hawk”, and Harvard Art Museums calls the same bird a falcon.

Feathers and the blue jay

A white feather has meant cowardice in English since at least 1811, when Francis Grose’s slang dictionary explained it by cockfighting: a game cock with a white feather was not of the true breed. In the First World War, the Imperial War Museums record, men not in uniform were presented with a white feather “as a symbol of cowardice”. Eagle feathers have religious uses, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service supplies them to enrolled members of federally recognised tribes through its National Eagle Repository. The editors of the North Carolina collection write that the blue jay is regarded by many as the devil’s messenger, and its entries say you never see one on a Friday because it is busy carrying twigs or sand to hell.

Sources

  1. Myths of the Cherokee (James Mooney, 1900), James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1, Project Gutenberg, Introduction; myth 5, The Daughter of the Sun; notes on bird lore
  2. Cardinal Meaning: Symbolism and Lore of the Red Bird (Melissa Mayntz, Farmers’ Almanac), Melissa Mayntz, Farmers’ Almanac, updated 19 August 2026, Farmers’ Almanac
  3. On Cardinals & Angels (Susan Stafford Kelly, Our State, 2022), Susan Stafford Kelly, Our State magazine, 24 October 2022, Our State
  4. Do Redbirds signal a visitor from Heaven? (Carol Viau, The Mountaineer, 2022), Carol Viau, The Mountaineer (Waynesville, North Carolina), 26 March 2022, The Mountaineer
  5. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 6 (Popular Beliefs and Superstitions, part 1), Newman Ivey White (general editor), The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 6: Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina, edited by Wayland D. Hand (Durham: Duke University Press), Internet Archive (Duke University Library copy), Introduction; Nos. 3979, 4516, 4519
  6. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7 (Wayland D. Hand, ed., 1964), Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina, part 2, ed. Wayland D. Hand (Durham: Duke University Press, 1964), Internet Archive (Duke University Library copy), Nos. 6718, 7252-7254
  7. Wings, Whiskers, and Webs (US Fish and Wildlife Service, 2025), US Fish and Wildlife Service, story, September 2025, US Fish and Wildlife Service, section on owls
  8. Athenian tetradrachm (Acropolis Museum), Acropolis Museum, collection entry, from the Acropolis hoard of 1886, Acropolis Museum
  9. Hugin og Munin (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon
  10. Genesis 8:7-8 (King James Version), Genesis 8:7-8, Bible Gateway, Genesis 8:7-8
  11. 1 Kings 17:4-6 (King James Version), 1 Kings 17:4-6, Bible Gateway, 1 Kings 17:4-6
  12. The Ravens (Tower of London, Historic Royal Palaces), Historic Royal Palaces, Tower of London visitor page, Historic Royal Palaces, The legend of the Tower Ravens
  13. The Tower Ravens: Invented Tradition, Fakelore, or Modern Myth? (Boria Sax), Boria Sax, Storytelling, Self, Society 6, no. 3 (2010), Wayne State University Press (Digital Commons), Abstract
  14. Yatagarasu, the Three-Legged Crow (Japan Tourism Agency), Japan Tourism Agency, multilingual commentary database, Kumano Nachi Taisha, Japan Tourism Agency
  15. The Yatagarasu: The Three-legged Crow That Guided Emperor Jimmu on his Journey (Kokugakuin University), Kokugakuin University, Encyclopedia of Shinto and Japanese culture articles (English), Kokugakuin University
  16. Hummingbirds and the Afterlife (Dumbarton Oaks), Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard University, online exhibition on epidemics and Mesoamerican herbals, Dumbarton Oaks
  17. A Handbook of Egyptian Religion, Adolf Erman, translated by A. S. Griffith, 1907, Archibald Constable, London (Internet Archive), pp. 10, 26, 30, 234
  18. Horus Falcon Wearing Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt with Uraeus (Harvard Art Museums), Harvard Art Museums, object 1943.1118, Late Period Egypt, Harvard Art Museums
  19. 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (Francis Grose), Francis Grose and others, 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Project Gutenberg, WHITE FEATHER
  20. Civilian ‘On War Service’ Badge From World War 1 (Imperial War Museums), Imperial War Museums, Tracing your family history: objects, Imperial War Museums
  21. National Eagle Repository (US Fish and Wildlife Service), US Fish and Wildlife Service, Office of Law Enforcement, US Fish and Wildlife Service

Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research