Birds of Myth and Legend, Arranged by Name from A to Z (this trail's own arrangement)

In Chinese tradition the fenghuang is a composite bird, described in early sources as assembled from parts of several creatures and appearing in an age of virtuous rule. It presides over the south among the directional animals and is paired with the long, the Chinese dragon, as a symbol of empress and emperor. The page records that the English name Chinese phoenix is a translator's convenience.

In Hindu tradition Garuda is a divine being whose birth is told in the Mahabharata: he raids heaven for the elixir of immortality to free his mother Vinata from servitude to the serpent nagas. He becomes the mount of Vishnu and the hereditary enemy of serpents, and is shown with the beak, wings and talons of a bird of prey on a partly human body.

In Norse tradition Huginn (Thought) and Muninn (Memory) are the two ravens who fly out from Odin each day over the world and return to his shoulders to report what they have seen and heard. Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda names them, and the Poetic Edda poem Grimnismal names them in a stanza spoken by Odin.

The page records that the phoenix reaches Europe through Greek writers describing an Egyptian bird. Herodotus reports at second hand that a bird called the phoinix comes from Arabia to Heliopolis every five hundred years bearing its dead parent in myrrh, and says he has not seen it. The later detail of rebirth from ashes appears in later classical and early Christian writing, including the Physiologus.

In Arabic and Persian tradition the roc is a traveller's marvel. In the Sinbad voyages of the Thousand and One Nights sailors mistake its egg for a white dome and a man escapes an island by tying himself to its leg. Marco Polo reports it from Madagascar as a bird strong enough to lift an elephant.

Thunderbird is a term covering distinct beings in several North American traditions. Among Northwest Coast peoples it is a supernatural whose wingbeat is thunder and who hunts whales. Among Plains and Great Lakes peoples the thunderers are usually plural, associated with the upper world and storms, and set against horned underwater beings.

In the Chinese sky the Vermilion Bird, Zhuque, is the emblem of the southern quarter, holding seven lodges from the Well in Gemini to the Chariot in Corvus. She belongs to the south, to summer, to the phase Fire and to the colour red. The page records that she is not the fenghuang, though the two are often run together.

In the K'iche' Maya Popol Vuh, Vucub Caquix (Seven Macaw) is a vast, gaudy macaw who falsely proclaims himself sun and moon before the true sun exists. The Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque bring him down with a blowgun and, with the help of an elderly couple of healers, trick him into surrendering his teeth and eyes.

In rabbinic tradition the Ziz is a colossal bird whose outspread wings darken the sun. Scripture speaks of the ziz sadai, usually translated as the creatures of the field, and later midrashic writing reads the word as the name of this bird. The page records it as the creature of the air, set with Behemoth for the land and Leviathan for the sea.