Why do owls have sad human faces? And other strange bird legends you’ve probably never heard

Why do owls look like that?

I'd never thought about the fact that owls have different faces to other birds, until i was researching this article. What an amazingly simple thing to overlook for 40 something years! 

Anyway, according to an old Inuit legend from the Arctic, a girl annoyed a spirit and the spirit rewarded her by changing her - irreversibly - into an owl.

Her fingers turned into claws. Her face sharpened into a beak. She grew feathers, panicked and flew - BAM! - straight into the side of an igloo. Poor thing.

The impact flattened her face and widened her eyes and she screamed into the night and never stopped.

And that is apparently why owls have sad, flat faces and always look like they’ve just seen something awful. At least according to folklore.

Did a wren cheat its way to a win?

In one legend from Heidelberg, Germany, the wren was once a dryad - a woodland spirit - who warned her lover never to raise his voice.

He did and she shrank into a bird and fled the forest, still shouting (in some versions he was transformed too and the pair were said to be constantly yapping at each other).

In another widespread European folk tale, the birds of the world once held a contest to choose a king. One bird to rule them all. 

The rule: whoever flew the highest would win the crown.

The eagle soared above them all proud and certain of victory. Until a tiny wren popped out from under his feathers and flitted a little higher.

The eagle was - rightly - furious. The wren won. Everyone else had to live with it.

Across traditions, the wren is clever, unpredictable - and a cheat that is deeply committed to loopholes.

Were swallows once children turned to birds?

In a legend from the Arctic, a group of children were playing near a cliff, building tiny houses out of clay and mud.

A passing spirit saw them and, without warning, transformed them into birds. The story doesn’t explain why. It just says that they vanished from the cliff as children and reappeared in the air as birds.

According to the legend, that’s why swallows build their nests out of mud, because that's what the children were doing.

In folklore, swallows have long been connected to safety, return and protection. They were thought to bring luck to the houses they nested on and harming them was said to bring misfortune.

Their arrival often marked the start of spring and the end of winter’s hardship.

Why is the robin’s chest red?

The sweetest and most precious of birds.

In British and Christian folklore, the robin was said to have flown to Christ’s side during the crucifixion and tried to ease his pain.

It pulled at a thorn and blood stained its white chest. Apparently the blood never washed out.

The bird became a sacred symbol, believed to carry souls or bring messages from the dead.

To harm one was to invite terrible luck. To see one near your home meant someone was trying to reach you.

The robin has long been cast as a gentle helper. And has then spent the rest of history being treated like a special kind of spiritual courier service.

Why Do Magpies Talk So Much?

Magpies get quite the bad rap, always yakking, always thieving shiny things and just generally being untrustworthy. And old folk legends have a great way of explaining why.

In one Roman myth, the magpie began as one of the nine daughters of Pierus - mortal women who challenged the Muses to a singing contest.

The Muses won easily, but the sisters refused to accept the outcome. They kept talking, mocking and interrupting until the gods finally silenced them by turning them into birds.

As they were transforming, their constant chattering carried on without pause. They were changed mid-sentence and dropped into the trees as magpies - forever talking but never listening.

In a separate European folktale, the magpie asked the other birds to teach her how to build a proper nest.

Each bird offered a step - where to place the first twig, how to weave in moss, how to line the inside with feathers.

But after each instruction, the magpie interrupted - “I already knew that.” Eventually the other birds gave up, leaving her with only half the method.

That, the story says, is why magpies still build the messiest, most uneven nests in the woods. All talk, no patience and i've certainly known a few human magpies in my time.

Why are ravens and crows always a bad sign?

If robins are the sweetest of birds, ravens and crows might well be considered their dark and angry cousins.

While there isn't a single origin legend tied to them, they have consistently been linked with war, death and prophecy throughout the ages. Especially in Celtic, Norse and Roman traditions.

Their habit of gathering on battlefields after conflict (like the Valravne of Danish folklore) gave them the status of ultimate scavenger, often the first to arrive and the last to leave.

Their dark feathers, sharp voices and overbearing presence have also long made them symbolic of darkness and death in art and literature.

Think king of poetic doom, Edgar Allan Poe and Hitchcock's "The Birds". Or the entire premise of The Crow, where the bird more or less moonlights as a grief counsellor with wings.

Depending on the tradition, ravens and crows were said to have worked for gods, ghosts, or no one in particular. They would just randomly appear. And then something would happen.

Usually something bad. I have to say, i'd take a yappy magpie over either of these any day of the week. Properly creepy birds.

Why is the woodpecker so hard to feed?

According to a northern European legend, the origins of the woodpecker began with a bannock (a kind of flatbread cooked on a griddle originating in Scotland) and a bad attitude.

Christ and Saint Peter were walking the earth when they stopped at the home of an old woman named Gertrude. They asked for a small cake to ease their hunger. She agreed - sort of.

The piece of dough she rolled out looked tiny, but on the griddle, it expanded. Too large to give away, apparently. She tried again with less dough. Same result. The third attempt was practically invisible when she pinched it off, but still, it puffed up too much for her liking. She kept them all.

For this, she was transformed. She shrank down, shot up the chimney and flew off as a woodpecker. Her blackened back came from the soot, her white apron and red headscarf stayed exactly where they were.

From then on, she was only allowed to drink raindrops and could find food only in the most inconvenient places - wedged between bark and wood, or buried deep inside the trunk.

That's some punishment, but also - imperfection is o.k, don't overthink it.