Death Symbolism: Birds

Not to sound like your high school English Lit teacher but isn’t symbolism cool?

We, as a society, decide that something is actually a representation of something else. Can it be confusing? Absolutely. But it’s also fascinating the way we take something simple or mundane and apply all kinds of meaning to it. And what typically gets a lot of meaning tied to it whether it needs to or not? Death.

The many symbols of death permeate our daily life on the regular with gravestones, skulls, and hearses but there’s also less overt symbols for death like clocks, certain flowers, flags at half mast, or various animals. Not to mention the different symbols of death spread out across all of the many religions and cultures that an average American might not be familiar with.

So with all of that in mind, I’m kicking off a new series dedicated to death symbolism. The why, when, and how the symbols we know for death have come to be. Let’s get this series started with our first death symbol: birds!

Bird symbolism is probably the most wide reaching type of symbolism with it showing up over and over again through different cultures, religions, and time periods. Birds can symbolize anything and everything from freedom, to good luck, to bad luck, and of course death. Folklore, mythology, and modern day pop culture use birds in a myriad of ways but let’s take a look at some of the most common birds of death symbolism.

Birds of Death

Cardinals

Have you ever heard the phrase “when cardinals appear, angels are near?” I hadn’t. It wasn’t until after my mom’s husband died in 2019 that I learned of the connection between cardinals and dead loved ones because my mom started taking notice of them. The whole idea is that when you see a cardinal, that’s supposed to represent your dead loved one coming by to say hey through the cardinal.

While there is no real consensus on when the association between cardinals and the dead came to be, we do know that Native Americans often associated cardinals with all kinds of things, one of which is the Cherokee belief that cardinals carry souls into the afterlife and also carry messages from the dead back to their loved ones.

Crows

I just love crows. I so badly want to be the kind of person crows befriend and bring little trinkets and shinies to. While I know there are plenty of crow lovers out there, that hasn’t stopped the crow from being a persistent symbol for death. I mean, a flock of crows is called a “murder” for crying out loud, though that apparently comes from a folktale that claims a flock of crows would hold trials and judge other crows for their transgressions then when deemed guilty the rest of the flock would murder that crow. Harsh. But meanwhile, this article by Rachael Funnell dives into crow funerals and how this death birds existence is all about not dying.

So why did crows become such a symbol for death? Well, much like their raven counterpart, crows are scavenger birds. They smell death and they hear the dinner bell so since crows are typically seen near animal carcasses or had been known to fly over battlefields, it’s not terribly surprising they got such a reputation.

Ravens

Though they’re similar to crows and do belong in the same genus of birds (Corvus) ravens have always struck me as the fancier of the two. Maybe it’s because ravens show up in literary works (Poe’s The Raven an obvious one) and have a football team named after them (the Baltimore Ravens, also in honor of Poe.) Or because people name their kids Raven or describe black-haired people as raven-haired. No one ever seems to use the term crow in a friendly sense what with calling someone an “Old Crow” or the term “Eating Crow.” Both have pretty strong negative vibes. So with all the positive connotations around ravens, how did they become a death symbol?

Similar to crows, ravens are scavengers, they live off the dead. Because of this, ravens have been tied to death and war. In Celtic mythology, the goddesses of war and death tend to be associated with both ravens and crows while many other cultures view both ravens and crows as messengers of the underworld. Not to mention that both birds are all black which typically is a color we connect with death (which we will get into in a future article.

Vultures

We all know the image of someone walking through the desert, sun blazing, sweat pouring, when suddenly a shadow from overhead begins to circle. Vultures, much like crows and ravens, are scavenger birds which makes it easy to associate them with death since they’re usually found picking at dead animal carcasses. But do you have any idea just how important vultures can be?

After a major decline in the vulture population in India over the last few decades, there have been thousands of human deaths indirectly caused by the diseases left from rotting carcasses. While vultures have stomachs that can handle and digest a lot of bad diseases without spreading them around, the dogs and rats that have taken to eating what the vultures are no longer around to handle don’t. Because of that, a lot more of the deadly diseases are being spread to humans.

So, although vultures are typically showcased as imposing and ominous, without their connection to death, the human race would be in a lot more trouble.

Owls

Though they’re often seen as a symbol of wisdom, even the Goddess Athena had an owl as her symbol, owls are known as harbingers of death among different Native American tribes. I had never known about this until watching the (very good and everyone should watch) FX show Reservation Dogs and when a fake owl appeared in an episode they actually blurred over the eyes and all the kids very pointedly made attempts not to look at the owl. Apparently, in some tribes, it’s believed that owls eyes are made from the nails of spirits. But while some tribes associated owls with death in a negative way, others viewed some species of owls as “the returned brave” according to birdsandblooms.com.

Wild Birds Flying into the House

Ever had a bird fly into your house? It’s jarring, annoying, and for those who believe in this superstition, unsettling. The idea is that if a wild bird makes its way into you home it can be seen as a warning for an approaching death. The Irish believe a bird in the house specifically targets a woman for death while another version says if a bird lands on a chair, the next person to sit in that chair is destined for death.

No concrete source can be identified for how this particular superstition came to be, but it continues to persist. When it comes to death, people often just want to make sense of it so it’s not surprising that connecting an event as unusual as a wild bird making its way into your home to something as mysterious as death would happen. Personally, I’ve had a number of birds show up in my house, usually within a couple of weeks of each other, and I don’t particularly recall any deaths during those times. But maybe I just got lucky.

Birds really hold a lot of symbolism, don’t they? Beacons of hope, wisdom, and freedom but also harbingers of doom, death, and destruction. Whether you believe in any of the superstitions or symbols involving birds and death, it’s hard to ignore the way they’ve permeated our lives.

Which birds have you associated with death and why? Which symbolism of death would you like to see me cover next? Let me know all your thoughts in the comments below!