Early humans are seen as inventors of fire technology. Now birds of prey such as the the Brown Falcon (Falco berigora) and the Black Kite (Milvus migrans) join the list of those propagating fires deliberately in the Australian savanna woodlands.
Many birds benefit from anthropogenic fires or lightning fires, but narratives of ornithogenic fires have for a long time survived in legends and ceremony in many places around the world.
"Fire provides the opportunity for pyrophilic behaviour by some birds. Brown Falcons, Falco berigora, perch at the fire-front waiting for grasshoppers, frogs, snakes, lizards and small mammals.
Local Aboriginal people believe that Black Kites set fires by carrying burning sticks to new locations and drop them into dry grass on unburnt grounds...I have seen a hawk pick up a smouldering stick in its claws and drop it in a fresh patch of dry grass half a mile away, then wait with its mates for the mad exodus of scorched and frightened rodents and reptiles.
“When that area was burnt out the process was repeated elsewhere. We call these fires Jarulan.”
There is an extensive body of recorded material – some over 100 years old – of Aboriginal myths and legends relating to birds and fire from across Australia." (Source)
Sources:
Ornithogenic Fire: Raptors as Propagators of Fire in the Australian Savanna, Bob Gosford, Crikey
Ethnoornithology focuses on the intersection of birds & human cultural diversity.
Image:
Kalila and Dimna, The Fables of Bidpai, The owls are burned to death by the crows. Syrian unknown master, 1310.
- The animal fables Panchatantra were originally composed in Sanskrit around the 3rd century BCE
- Ramsay Wood believes that these fables provide one of the earliest secular examples of what Lawrence Lessig calls Remix Culture.
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