All across the Mediterranean, birds, some recognizable, others not, appear carved into stone, painted across walls, traced into ceilings and illustrated in the pages of illuminated manuscripts.

From the third century onward, texts such as the Physiologus, and medieval bestiaries, assembled narratives and fantastical illustrations about animals, some coming from observation and others reinterpreted from Egyptian, Greek and Roman mythologies, and ancient writings. These manuscripts imbued the natural world with allegorical meaning, believing that the secrets of mankind were somehow embedded in animal behavior.

Observation is filtered through belief, and belief solidifies into form resembling our own ideas.