Whoever wrote the ornithological sections of the History of Animals – whether it was just Aristotle himself, his team of researchers, Aristotle’s successors after his death, or (most plausibly) a combination of all three¹, there is one general fact about those passages: most of the authorial statements about what had been seen are accurate, at times remarkably so, but at the same time several interpretations based on the observations have been demonstrated as faulty by modern ornithological research. In this paper, written just before André Hurst’s 65^th birthday in honour of his scholarly achievements, five passages that have for some time been known to testify both to the excellence of the Aristotelian (or [Aristotelian]) observations and to an intelligent but incorrect interpretation of what had been seen will first be discussed, before two new examples are presented of unexpectedly accurate visual observations that have not hitherto been noticed by classicists.

(1) Aristotle HA 518b35-519a3 περὶ δὲ τά πτερωτὰ τῶν ζῴων, οἷον τοὺς ὄρνιθας, κατὰ μὲν τὰς ἡλικίας οὐδὲν μεταβάλλει, πλὴν γέρανος• αὕτη δ᾿ οὖσα τεϕρὰ μελάντερα γηράσκουσα τὰ πτερὰ ἴσχει. (With regard to feathered creatures, such as birds, none changes through age, except the Common Crane. This is ash-grey, but as it ages its feathers turn darker): cf. GA785^a22, Plin. nat. 10,80. The claim that the feathers of this Crane (Grus grus) blacken with age simply misreads the fact that the worn feathers of this species are distinctly darker than its fresh plumage after a moult².

(2) 600a10-16 ϕωλοῦσι δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ τῶν ὀρνίθων … ἀλλ᾿ οἱ μὲν πλησίον ὄντες τοιούτων τόπων ἐν οἷς διαμένουσι, καὶ ἰκτῖνοι καὶ χελιδόνες, ἀποχωροῦσιν ἐνταῦθα, οἱ δὲ πορρωτέρω ὄντες τῶν τοιούτων οὐκ ἐκτοπίζουσιν ἀλλὰ κρύπτουσιν ἑαυτούς. ἤδη γὰρ ὠμμέναι πολλαὶ χελιδόνες εἰσὶν ἐν ἀγγείοις ἐψιλωμέναι πάμπαν. (Many of the birds too hide … but some that are near to the kind of places where they always live (both Kites and Hirundines) go off there, but other birds that are farther off from such places don’t migrate but hide themselves. In the past many Hirundines have been seen in receptacles completely bare of their feathers.) This passage is in fact less incorrect when considered in the light of modern ornithological knowledge than it first appeared to non-ornithologists. The term χελιδών covers all five Greek species of Hirundine: Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica), Red-rumped Swallow (H. daurica), Crag Martin (Ptyoprogne rupestris), House Martin (Delichon urbica) and Sand Martin (Riparia riparia). Four of these are totally migratory, but Crag Martins overwinter in Acarnania, the Peloponnese and some islands (Crete, Rhodes, Lesbos), either having bred there or arrived there for the winter after only a short-distance migration³. Moreover, a few Barn Swallows and House Martins are recorded each year as aberrantly overwintering in southern and western Europe as far north even as Britain and Ireland. Hence HA’s view that some χελιδόνες overwinter is not the egregious error that has sometimes been supposed, and Gilbert White’s often dismissed claim that “though most of the swallow kind may migrate, … some do stay behind and hide with us during the winter” (letter XII to Pennant⁴) is in fact accurate. The remark cited above about Hirundines having been seen in a receptacle (the Greek word ἀγγεῖον is a receptacle able to take dry or wet stores) denuded of feathers (and so presumably dead) was based in all probability by perhaps just one man’s report to Aristotle’s team of researchers one spring on Lesbos or at Assos that he had then seen a receptacle full of dead Hirundines denuded of feathers. Such a winter or spring sighting of dead Hirundines in an ἀγγεῖον would not seem remarkable to a modern ornithologist, although it would not be inferred from the sighting that these dead Hirundines had necessarily been overwintering in Greece, as the Aristotelian report assumes. It is now known that Hirundines preparing to migrate south each autumn assemble in large numbers for roosting, usually in the reeds surrounding lakes and pools, but also occasionally in less expected places. If a sudden sharp autumn frost then comes in the night of such a roost, vast numbers of the birds are simply frozen to death, and their bodies would possibly not be discovered until the warmth of the following spring made the roosting place more accessible⁵. Thus an accurate ancient observation was accordingly in all probability incorrectly interpreted in the passage of HA.

(3) 615a35 ὁ δ᾿ ἔποψ τὴν νεοττείαν μάλιστα ποιεῖται ἐκ τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης κότρου. (The Hoopoe makes its nest mainly out of human dung); cf. Ael.NA3.26. The allegation that nests of the [Eurasian] Hoopoe (Upupa epops) were full of dung was believed until quite recently⁶, but in fact it appears to be based on a misinterpretation of the fact that if a potential predator approaches the nest, the female is able to discharge faecal material with a range of 24 to 36 centimetres, and both the female and the nestlings squirt out an evil-smelling fluid in the direction of that predator⁷.

(4) 632b14-18 τῶν δὲ ὀρνέων πολλὰ μεταβάλλουσι κατὰ τὰς ὥρας καὶ τὸ χρῶμα καὶ τὴν ϕωνήμ, οἷον ὁ κόττυϕος ἀντὶ μέλανος ξανθός, καὶ τὴν ϕωνὴν ἴσχει ἀλλοίαν• ἐν μὲμ γὰρ τῷ θέρει ᾄδει, τοῦ δὲ χειμῶνος παταγεῖ καὶ ϕθέγγεται θορυβῶδες. (Many of the birds change both colour and voice according to the season; thus the Blackbird becomes brown instead of black, and it has a different voice, for in summer it sings, but during winter it chatters and has a boisterous call.) Here we have two excellent pieces of observation, one correctly reported and correctly understood, the other based on an accurate observation that the European Blackbird (Turdus merula)⁸ generally (I leave out of consideration here the alleged existence in Aristotle’s time of albino Blackbirds on and around Mount Cyllene⁹) come in two different colours: some all black, some dark brown. That colour differentiation is then given an apparently plausible explanation, accepted by later classical writers (Ael.NA12.28, Plin. nat. 10,80), but that explanation is both inadequate and inaccurate because it is based on insufficient knowledge of the facts. Ancient writers did not know that (i) a fully adult male Blackbird is all black, while an adult female is dark umber brown all over; and that (ii) a young male blackbird has up to its first autumnal moult a dusky brown plumage resembling that of the adult female, and does not acquire the adult male’s all-black plumage until its third moult¹⁰. The statements about the Blackbird’s song and calls, however, is precise and accurate; we may compare, for instance, Aristophanes Birds 305-306, saying that Blackbirds chirp and run, Theocritus’ epigram (4.9-10 Gow = Anthologia Palatina 9.437.9-10), saying they sing in spring varied songs with clear voices. The Blackbird’s song is sung by the male in the breeding season: “fluent and beautiful fluty notes … an easy continuous warble lasting from 2 to 8 seconds”. In winter, however, Blackbirds have only a series of unmusical calls, with a chattering ‘tchook tchook’ predominant as a signal of mild alarm¹¹.

(5) 633a11-14 μεταβάλλει δὲ καὶ ὁ κό;κκυξ καὶ τὸ χρῶμα, καὶ τῇ ϕωνῇ οὐ σαϕηνίζει, ὅταν μέλλῃ ἀϕανίζεσθαι• ἀϕανίζεται δ᾿ ὑπὸ κύνα, ϕανερὸς δὲ γίνεται ἀπὸ τοῦ ἔαρος ἀρξάμενος μεχρὶ κυνὸς ἐποτολῆς. (When the Cuckoo is about to disappear, it changes its colour and doesn’t have a distinct call. It disappears about the time of the dog-star, and becomes visible starting from spring up to the rising of the dog-star: i.e. about 20 July). This comment accurately reports a fact about the [Common] Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus)¹² which ornithologists know well: that most of the Cuckoos seen in spring are all grey, but those seen in July are often rusty or buff in colour. Yet this is not explained by any variation in an individual bird’s plumage, but by a different series of facts. In spring it is the grey male Cuckoo that is easily visible when it calls, perching in the open on a telephone wire, fence post or tree branch that has not produced its leaves, but thereafter it is far less visible before migrating back south in August. Rufous-phase females and rufous-brown immatures, however, begin to show themselves in June and July well before their migration south¹³.

(6) The five passages discussed above confirm the general need to accept the sharpness and accuracy of the eyes of those reporting ornithological data for the History of Animals, even if sometimes the interpretations of those data can now be considered faulty. Occasionally that visual sharpness goes far beyond what anyone could expect from the fourth century BC. At 597a4-6, for instance, where the migration of the Common Crane is being discussed: μεταβάλλουσι γὰρ ἐκ τῶν Σκυθικῶν πεδίων εἰς τὰ ἕλη τὰ ἄνω τῆς Αἰγύπτου ὅθεν ὁ Νεῖλος ῥεῖ. (They migrate from the Scythian plains to the marshes beyond Egypt from which the Nile flows)¹⁴. When those words were written the sources of neither the Blue nor the White Nile had been accurately discovered, and it must remain uncertain whether here the writer was referring to the Sudd, a marshy labyrinth in southern Sudan where the course of the White Nile becomes very uncertain, or to the Blue Nile’s source at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. What I can confirm, however, is that I personally saw (in December 2002) a flock of wintering Common Cranes huddled together in marshy fields only a very few kilometres east of Lake Tana. Presumably the source of the information given in HA597^a4-6 was ultimately some traveller¹⁵ who had seen wintering Cranes at one of the two spots mentioned above.

(7) My final passage (609b23-25) concerns the Grey Heron: ὁ πελλὸς χαλεπῶς εὐνάζει καὶ ὀχεύει. κράζει γὰρ καὶ αἷμα, ὥς ϕασιν, ἀϕίησιν ἐκ τῶν ὀϕθαλμῶν ὀχεύων, καὶ τὶκτει ϕαυλῶς καὶ ὀδυνηρῶς. (The Grey has difficulty in being mounted and mounting, for it screams and, as they say, drips blood from its eyes while mounting, and it gives birth badly and painfully). This is a masterly list of observations, not always correctly understood or interpreted by its author, which clearly describe Greece’s commonest (and resident) Heron, the Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea)¹⁶. The claim that both sexes have difficulty in mating, when the male screams and drips blood from its eyes, and that the female gives birth painfully has often been dismissed as wild fantasy or exaggeration, but it is simply an uncomprehending description and distortion of reality. Lowe’s book on the Grey Heron (73-74, 159) draws particular attention to a remarkable change of colour both on the beak and round the eye of some Grey Herons at the time of mating: the beak temporarily becomes bright red, as does the outer circle of the eye, caused by a surplus of endocrine secretions producing carotenoid pigments (cf. BWP 1, 308, 311: Lowe)¹⁷. This presumably was misunderstood by the author of HA as eye bleeding. Coition also always looks difficult, with the female perched on a branch, the male grasping his female’s neck feathers and flapping his wings to maintain balance. When the male is courting his female, he calls loudly to her, and this, together with the later series of ear-splitting calls when one bird approaches the nest to relieve its mate¹⁸, may explain the reference to screaming¹⁹.