Savage’s book, The Magic of Birds is a short and lovely introduction to bird facts, folklore, and magic. This book covers information that is, as Savage herself mentions, slightly biased towards “British and European superstitions and stories,” as those are her special interest and passion. That being said, this book does travel world-wide, too, so there’s something for nearly everyone to connect with.
The book is organized into bird types: songbirds, carrion eaters, birds of prey… so you can skip around the pages as you like without having to read cover-to-cover (though, the whole book is excellent).
My own special liking is for the carrion eaters, particularly crows and ravens, and I was pleased to see there was quite a bit on them: facts (ravens can live up to 40 years in captivity), mythology (the story of the Rainbow Crow from the Lenin Lanape Tribe of Native Americans is included here, and is lovely), and some magical correspondences and associations: transformation, resilience, cleanliness, death and rebirth…
Savage opens with an amusing tale of a magpie relieving itself on her car’s windshield, which brought to mind my old landlord’s problem with a couple of crows: he turned the hose on them multiple times trying to get rid of them so they, beautiful, mischievous, and slightly vengeful creatures, brought all their crow family, pre-loaded with blackberries, and proceeded to do their business all over his shiny new Camaro. Their poo was so acidic it ate through the car’s clearcoat.
Another fascinating crow fact: they remember who is nice to them and who isn’t!
Savage includes some lovely rituals, visualizations, and celebrations in the final chapter with text to use, suggestions to take into consideration, and all of them are quite accessible and simple.
This book would be a lovely addition to a witchy bird-lovers collection, and a good companion to a more standard birding guide to add depth and magic to their knowledge!
~review by Mara McTavish
Author: Mabh Savage
Publisher: Moon Books
Pp.: 99, $12.95 USD
