“Seven for a secret never to be

told”1

Apart from James Edmund Harting2 and Archibald Geikie3, very few

people have tried to capitalize on the ornithological wealth of

Shakespeare’s writings. Not only is the play filled with allusions to birds

and bird-related activities but at a subliminal level, the image of flight

comes back in numerous incarnations. Owing to its brevity, the tension

in Macbeth is built by the speed and emotional portent of these flight

imageries. Our paper will mainly focus on the various allusions to birds

occurring in the play, their actual characteristics (if Shakespeare has

noted an unnatural behavior among them) and finally, the complete

absence of birds from the fifth act of the play. We are not trying to

write another Ornithology of Shakespeare’s plays, we are simply

focusing on their multiple roles in this play.

Ornithology or the zoological discipline of the study of birds had

developed considerably uptil Shakespeare’s times. Each civilization

around the globe boasts of one or the other illustrated text on the

distribution of avian species in its region and information about their

habitats and information about patterns of bird migration, moulting,

egg laying and life spans. Cultures around the world have rich
vocabularies related to birds. Traditional bird names are often based

on detailed knowledge of the behaviour, with many names being

onomatopoeic, many still in use. Traditional knowledge may also

involve the use of birds in folk medicine and knowledge of these

practices are passed on through oral traditions Aristotle’s fourth

century B.C. Historia animalium is considered by many as the first

study in Western culture to account for what we observe in nature.

Falconry occupies such an important position in the language of

Shakespeare’s plays, and its earliest written records can be traced

back to those of Sargon II of Mesopotamia (the seminal De arte

venandi cum avibus by Frederick II of Hauhenstaufen came out much

later, in 1240)(wikipedia).

Until the scientific developments of the Renaissance, most of the

ornithological records were prepared by dangerously trapping the

birds, using lime nets or trammels. Optical instruments being hitherto

unavailable, many factual errors are noticed in all the major Greek and

Roman bird studies. The important ornithological texts to emerge in

Europe from 1500-1650 are Pierre Belons Book of Birds, Ulisse

Aldrovandi’s ornithologiae hoc est de avibus historiae libri XII and

William Turner’s Historia Avium. These texts might have been read by

Shakespeare, as suggested by the ornithologist James Edmund

Harting(Harting).
Alexander Pope has expressed the opinion that whatever object of

nature or branch of science Shakespeare either speaks of or describes,

it is always with competent if not with exclusive knowledge.

Shakespeare’s accurate observations on this subject, the apt allusions,

and the beautiful metaphors to be met with throughout the Plays, may

be said to owe their origin mainly to three causes. Firstly, Shakespeare

had a good practical knowledge of Falconry, a pastime which, being

much in vogue in his day, brought under his notice, almost of

necessity, many wild birds, exclusive of the various species which were

hawked at and killed. Secondly, he was a great reader, and, possessing

a good memory, was enabled subsequently to express in verse ideas

which had been suggested by older authors. Thirdly, and most

important of all, he was a genuine naturalist, and gathered a large

amount of information from his own practical observations.

Apart from the consideration that a poet may be expected, almost of

necessity, to invoke the birds of song, Shakespeare has gone further,

and displays a greater knowledge of ornithology, and a greater

accuracy in his statements, than is generally the case with poets.

Interestingly, Shakespeare does signal some of the evolutionary

changes occurring towards the end of the sixteenth century (Dooley).

Paying homage to Harting’s seminal treatise, we have borrowed his

hierarchy of birds (in Shakespeare’s plays) and would proceed through

our list of seven in the prescribed order. In Macbeth, this would be as

follows-

a) Diurnal birds of prey-eagle, vulture, kite, falcon.

b) The obscure bird which clamour’d the livelong night –owl

c) Scavengers or carrion feeders- raven, rook, crow,

d) Harbingers of fate- maggot pies, choughs.

e) Diminutive bird- wren, martlet, sparrow

f) Birds under domestication-chicken, goose.

g) Birds trapped using bird-lime and nets.

Eagle- We begin our hierarchy with the king of birds, the majestic

diurnal bird of prey renowned for its large size, muscular strength and

powerful flight.

With the Romans, the eagle is the emblem of the empire and the omen

of victory (as evident from plays like Julius Caesar and Cymbeline). All

the elements of Shakespeare's eagle imagery when gathered: the sun,

the flight, the majestic magnanimity of the eagle king and its political

connotations, not always devoid of threat. Curiously enough,

Shakespeare doesn’t employ this omen more than once in the play.

The only instance of its usage deals with a joking reference to the

invincible Macbeth and Banquo being harried by the Norwegian forces:

Sergeant
[…]But the Norweyan lord surveying vantage,
With furbish'd arms and new supplies of men
Began a fresh assault.
Duncan
Dismay'd not this
Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?
Sergeant
Yes;
As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.
(I .ii. 31-35)

If Shakesperare, while writing these lines, was thinking about a bird he

may have encountered, or which his contemporaries were familiar

with, we can only hypothesize that is was the White-tailed Eagle. It is

the largest bird of prey to be found on the British Isles. For the most

part, it lives on carrion and is sometimes called the Sea Eagle as it

scavenges mainly along the coast. Once abundant, the last wild British

pair bred on the Isle of Skye in Scotland in 1916.

It would be too simplistic to infer that the dominance of evil in the play

suppresses any over-usage of a positive imagery like the imperial

eagle. If we ponder on the hierarchical order of birds, we might see an

interesting parallel of the theme of reversal of values(Knights). The

feudal order that was coming into existence in Duncan’s times had its

inherent weaknesses, leading to revolt and expulsion of the lord or

lord-like figure. Whereas serfs form the lowest rung of the feudal order,

sparrows or such diminutive birds stand in a similar relation to the

golden eagle. The sparrows frightening the eagles might be read as an

example of dramatic irony.

Vulture- The vulture is mainly used by Shakespeare in relation to the

Promethean myth, where Prometheus tied to Caucasus has his

immortal liver eaten endlessly by an eagle, and not a vulture which

does not prey on living animals. The confusion in this myth between

the vulture and the eagle must come from the translations of the

earlier versions from the Greek and Latin.

In Macbeth, the reference to a vulture’s insatiable appetite is linked

with the tyrant’s unquenchable desire for evil deeds.

MACDUFF
Boundless intemperance
In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
The untimely emptying of the happy throne
And fall of many kings. But fear not yet
To take upon you what is yours: you may
Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty,
And yet seem cold, the time you may so hoodwink.
We have willing dames enough: there cannot be
That vulture in you, to devour so many
As will to greatness dedicate themselves,
Finding it so inclined.
(IV. iii. 67-76)

In this “testing” scene between Malcom and Macduff, Macbeth’s felony

is indirectly linked with that of the vulture. However this linkage is not
unidirectional in nature. Macbeth might be a vulture of sedition,

gnawing away the foundations of the prevalent political order.

Kite-The kite would have been familiar to Londoners as a scavenger

on the rubbish heaps around town. Though the birds would have been

doing the townsfolk a favour by removing carrion and other dead

matter, they were reviled as evil, opportunistic birds.

This practice of employing birds of prey like owls and kites to control

the rodent population of a residential area, had been vogue in Scotland

at the historical time of Macbeth. These kites also hunted down the

poultry birds of their owners, and this behavior acted against their

favor. In the following reference, Macbeth is the human manifestation

of the hell-kite, murdering the weak and helpless wife and children of

Macduff:.

MACDUFF
He has no children. All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?
(IV. iii. 216-219)

The dual attitude of the populace towards this bird of prey might

remind us of the modern debate over the use of violence- between the

supposedly legitimate violence of the state and the supposedly

illegitimate violence of those who dissent or oppose its authority.

The habit which the kite has, in common with other rapacious birds, of

rejecting or disgorging the undigested portions of its food, such as

bones and fur, in the shape of pellets, was apparently well known to

Shakespeare. After the first appearance of the Ghost of Banquo,

Macbeth says:

" If charnel-houses and our graves must send

Those that we bury back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites."
(IV. iii. 70-73).

An ancient fear was that a person who was not properly buried would

have his bones picked clean by birds. Macbeth thinks that the dead

ought to stay where they belong; if the graves are going to send the

bodies back, the kites, with their maws full of human flesh, are going to

be the only real graves.

Falcon-Shakespeare’s plays abound with references to falconry, but

the Scottish play is an exception to the rule. Here the falcon plays a

more thematic role of demonstrating the unnatural order prevailing in

Macbeth’s reign. The towering falcon being hunted down by the

unsuspecting owl is an omen of fiendish usurpation of power.

Old Man

'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last,
A falcon, towering in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.
(II. iv. 10-13)
Owl- The bard has noted “the night owl’s lazy flight,” [3rd Henry VI]
and the predatory habits of the “mousing owl.” [Macbeth] When Lady
Macbeth, alone and on the alert for the perpetration of the murder,
hears a sound, she exclaims in anxious suspense:

“Hark! – Peace!
It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman
Which gives the stern’st good-night.”

Her husband, too, after he has done the deed, emerges to her with the

eager question “Didst though not hear a noise?”; to which she replies,

“I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.” Next morning before the

fatal news had become known it was reported that, through the midst

of a storm,

“The obscure bird

Clamour’d the livelong night.”

Among its mysterious relationships, the owl was believed to be

connected with some of the machinations of witchcraft. It will be

remembered that the miscellaneous ingredients which went to the

making of the hell-broth of Macbeth’s “midnight hags” included “a

lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing.”

The owl is the "obscure bird," because it flies in the night and can't be

seen. Perhaps that owl was the same one that Lady Macbeth heard

when Macbeth was killing King Duncan. Just after Lennox finishes this
speech, Macduff comes rushing in with the news that King Duncan has

been murdered.

Crow- A group of crows is called a flock or a murder. Crows, and

especially ravens, often feature in European legends or mythology as

portents or harbingers of doom or death, because of their dark

plumage, unnerving calls, and tendency to eat carrion (including those

of humans). They are commonly thought to circle above scenes of

death such as battles.

In occult circles, distinctions are sometimes made between crows and

ravens. In mythology and folklore as a whole, crows tend to be

symbolic more of the spiritual aspect of death, or the transition of the

spirit into the afterlife, whereas ravens tend more often to be

associated with the negative (physical) aspect of death. However, few

if any individual mythologies or folklores make such a distinction, and

there are ample exceptions. Another reason for this distinction is that

while crows are typically highly social animals, ravens don't seem to

congregate in large numbers anywhere but:

1. Near carrion where they meet seemingly by chance, or

2. At cemeteries, where large numbers sometimes live together,

even though carrion there is no more available (and probably

less attainable) than any road or field.(wikipedia).

Commentators on the play have attributed the color of the crow

contributing to the general dark atmosphere of Macbeth. We would like

to argue that they didn’t pay close attention to the actual specie of

crow(Corvus coronix) inhabiting the mountains, forests and castles of

Scotland. The bird’s plumage exhibits a gradient of colors from black to

white. .

Raven- Immediately after Lady Macbeth reads her husband's letter

about the witches' prophecies, a messenger come with the news that

King Duncan is coming to spend the night at her castle. After the

messenger has left, the first thing Lady Macbeth says:

The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements
(I. v. 38-40).

The raven is a bird of ill omen, and Lady Macbeth means that the raven

is hoarse from saying again and again that King Duncan must die.

Why did these birds(ravens, crows, owls) come to be accepted as birds

of ill omen? Among other texts, Ovid’s Metamorphoses might have

shaped the popular perception of these birds in Elizabethan times.4

Magpies, choughs, rooks-

In Act III Scene iv, after Macbeth has finally driven away the Ghost of

Banquo, he reflects that a murder will always be discovered,

sometimes in strange ways:

Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;

Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood
(III. iv. 122-125).

Maggot-pies (magpies), choughs (jackdaws), and rooks are all birds

that can be taught to speak a few words. And of course, Macbeth

himself is a secret man of blood, a murderer.

The majority of folklore revolves around the seeing of a single bird,

through the British Isles it is generally considered unlucky to view a

single magpie, and so steps are taken to ward off such bad luck. In

Scotland and Northern Ireland one should salute – and preferably greet

the bird or ask after the health of the absent Mrs. Magpie, whilst in the

majority of England one should wave or doff ones hat. This is supposed

to make the assumption that there are in fact two birds, and thus ward

off the bad luck (one for sorrow) and change it into good (two for joy).

In Scotland the sighting of a lone bird near a house window signals an

impending death, as the belief is that the bird carries a drop of the

devils blood under their tongue (Tidemann and Gosler).

In Shakespeare’s time, the chough, a bird favoring sea cliffs, would

have been present at Dover. They are not there today, nor have they
been for centuries. Thus Shakespeare chronicles the decline of the

chough.

Wren- Wrens are mainly small and inconspicuous, except for their

loud and often complex songs. These birds have short wings and they

cannot see at night.

The wren is also known as kuningilin “kinglet” in Old High German, a

name associated with a legend of an election of the “king of birds”.

The bird who could fly to the highest altitude would be made king. The

eagle outflew all other birds, but he was beaten by a small bird who

had hidden in his plumage. Otherwise the behavior of the bird

described by Shakespeare leaves no doubt concerning its name. The

Wren, though not much bigger than the Goldcrest, lives closer to man

and has the habit of defending its territory noisily:

for the poor wren,

The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.
All is the fear and nothing is the love,
As little is the wisdom, where the flight
So runs against all reason.
(IV. ii. 9-14)

In Richard III, the reversal of the natural hierarchy is at the basis of the

metaphor and vividly expresses Richard’s state of mind:

The world is grown so bad

That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.
Since every jack became a gentleman,
There’s many a gentle person made a jack.
(I. iii. 70-73)

Martlet-

Duncan
This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.

Banquo
This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt,
I have observ’d The air is delicate.
(I. vi. 1-10)

There is a contrast between harsh and sweet terms, between war and

procreation, between the heavy images of protective architecture and

the light images of summer and nature, between haunting and

breeding. The guest of summer is a martlet, in which we hear the

name of the war-god. But as Mars is reduced to a diminutive and to a

bird, so the language in general tries to sweeten and lighten the terms

of danger without fully succeeding. “Breed” gives way to “,haunt”; “the

air is delicate” trembles between its summery and precarious senses.

As a symbolic projection, the passage refers to Macbeth’s castle and

may thus be construed as a comment on Macbeth. Banquo once again

directs attention away from himself and toward his colleague. But the
contrast evokes more directly the protective and gentle sides of

Duncan as source of blood and milk, and furthermore the words tend

to make the castle converge with the loved mansionry of a temple

where heaven’s breath smells wooingly, a royal image used later by

Macduff (“the Lord’s anointed Temple,”). Who is the war-bird who

makes his home as a kind of parasite in Macbeth’s castle and Duncan’s

kingship? Who has a bed hanging from either or both where he hides

and watches from his secure coign of vantage? Who will soon rise to

haunt Macbeth? From whose procreant cradle will the future kings of

Scotland emerge?(Berger)

This habit of building its nest in places which look inviting, but are in

fact dangerous provides Shakespeare with an illustration “to

emphasize the irony of the deceptiveness of appearances”. This is

evident in The Merchant of Venice where Prince of Arragon(who has to

choose which casket to open, explains that he does not belong to:

Arragon

[...] the fool multitude that choose by show,

Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach,

Which pries not to th’interior, but like the martlet

Builds in the weather on the outward wall,

Even in the force and road of casualty.

(II. ix. 26-30)

In each case a guest arrives, Prince of Arragon or Duncan, a guest who

is to be ‘fooled’ or deceived, Prince of Arragon to find a fool’s head

instead of his bride, Duncan to be foully murdered by his thane and

kinsman. A possible reason for the connection in Shakespeare’s mind

between the house martin and someone who is fooled or duped is that

in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a kind of slang term for a

‘dupe’ was ‘martin’, and the word is so used by Greene and Fletcher

(Spurgeon).

Chickens and Birds in General-

While on the subject of small birds in general, and song birds in

particular, it will be interesting to glance at the methods which were

formerly practised for catching them. These methods were many and

various in kind. Springes, gins, bat-fowling, bird-lime, bird-bolts, and

birding- all these devices are mentioned by Shakespeare.

In Act IV Scene ii of the play when Lady Macduff comes to terms with

the Macduff’s sudden fleeing, she tries to make light of the situation by

pretending to believe that things are worse than they really are. She

says to her son:

LADY MACDUFF
Sirrah, your father's dead;
And what will you do now? How will you live?
Son
As birds do, mother.
LADY MACDUFF
What, with worms and flies?
Son
With what I get, I mean; and so do they.5
LADY MACDUFF
Poor bird! thou'ldst never fear the net nor lime,
The pitfall nor the gin.
Son
Why should I, mother? Poor birds they are not set for.
(IV. ii. 30-37)

"The net" and "lime" (birdlime, a sticky substance) being the two most

common ways of catching birds, but this boy -- his mother says -- is so

innocent or stupid that he wouldn't fear either one. The boy is unfazed.

He takes the word "poor" to mean "little," and says that poor birds are

too little to be trapped.

In Act V of Macbeth, the only mention of a bird is the goose look, borne

on the face of Macbeth’s servant. The goose look has been variously

interpreted to mean a sad countenance, and this line seems to be a

reflection of Macbeth’s inner thoughts. Even as he gets ready to meet

Malcolm’s forces in battle, he has an inkling of Fortune letting him

down and moreover, it is the sadness related to his alienation from

family and friends.

The imagery of birds is largely absent in this act. One might say it is

because the dramatist has brought to life everything that the birds

signified till the last act.

1

NOTES

This is a line from the Magpie rhyme. In Britain and Ireland a widespread
traditional rhyme records the myth (it is not clear whether it has been seriously
believed) that seeing magpies predicts the future, depending on how many are
seen. The first seven lines are as follows-

“One for sorrow,

Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told.”
2

James Edmund Harting, F.L.S., F.Z.S. Member Of The British Ornithologists’

Union, Author of The Ornithology of Shakespeare(1871), The Birds of Middlesex
(1866), Rambles in Search of Shells (1876), Ostriches and Ostrich Farming (1877),
British Animals extinct within Historic Times (1880) and A Catalogue of Books
Ancient and Modern relating to Falconry (1891).

3
Sir Archibald Geikie, OM, KCB, PRS, FRSE (28 December 1835 - 10 November
1924), was a Scottish geologist and writer.
4
What the birds get is provided by God, as Jesus said: "Behold the fowls of the air;
for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly
Father feedeth them" (Matthew.6:26)..
5

According to Ovid's Metamorphoses, in classical mythology, when the crow told

the god Apollo that his lover Coronis was cheating on him with a mortal, he
became very angry, and part of that anger was directed at the crow, whose
feathers he turned from white to black. For further elucidation of this point, see
Ovid.