SHEDDING LIGHT UPON THE MYSTERY OF LUMINOUS BIRDS - Part 2: ALL AGLOW WITH SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS!

 

Is this what a luminous or glowing owl would look like?

Sceptics notwithstanding, the phenomenon of luminous birds whose lengthy history I surveyed recently on ShukerNature in Part 1 of this two-part review (click here to read Part 1) is assuredly genuine, but how can it be explained? Five principal potential solutions have been suggested by amateur naturalists and professional scientists alike down through the ages, and these are as follows:

 

1) It is due to the bird having made physical external contact with phosphorescent organisms living on decayed wood in tree holes

The idea behind this suggested solution – the most familiar and extensively documented of the five under consideration here – is that such contact would cause phosphorescent bacteria, plants, and fungi growing on the wood to become attached to the bird's feathers, thereby yielding an area of luminescence upon its plumage.

 

How a glowing barn owl with a particularly luminous breast might look

However, whereas the parts of a bird's body most likely to make contact with wood when entering or exiting a tree hole would be its wings and head (brushing against the rim of the hole), the body region actually exhibiting most (or all) of its perceived luminescence in those specimens that have been reported has tended to be the breast, with the wings and head sometimes giving off little (if any) light.

Also, it must be remembered that glowing examples of extremely large birds, such as North America's great blue heron Ardea herodias, standing 45-54 inches tall, have been recorded – and it seems highly unlikely that birds of this stature would (or could) inhabit tree holes.

 

A great blue heron (© Mike Baird/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.0 licence)

In addition, and as its common name suggests, the barn owl, the most popular identity for luminous owls, prefers to roost in barns or deserted out-houses rather than in tree holes (though it will roost in them if need be).

Yet if this option is nonetheless a viable one in relation to certain bird species, a common phosphorescent fungus likely to be involved is the honey fungus Armillaria mellea – a very abundant, widespread, edible species (or species complex, as is nowadays deemed to be the case) that lives on trees and woody shrubs, and sports bioluminescent mycelia yielding an ethereal greenish-blue glow commonly referred to as foxfire.

 

The honey fungus Armillaria mellea (© Stu's Images/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Indeed, I remember reading long ago a fascinating snippet of information demonstrating just how powerful the foxfire glow of this fungal species can be. Edited by Dilys Breese, and published by the BBC in 1981, the multi-contributor book Wildlife Questions and Answers included the snippet in question, provided by correspondent R. Watling, and which reads as follows:

I have often seen the eerie light of the honey fungus in a tropical rain forest. You see all the leaves and stems and trunks, twenty-five feet tall maybe in an old tree, with this beautiful glow, just like a silver lady among the trees. And these fungi can even take their own photographs! If you set up a camera next to one of them, given enough exposure time, you will get a picture of the fungus all bright and shiny, taken by its own luminescence.

 

Schistostega luminous moss inside a Japanese cave (© Dr TerraKhan/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Another species likely to play a part in this particular proffered solution is a phosphorescent plant officially called the luminous moss Schistostega pennata, but also known by such charming colloquial names as goblin gold and rabbit's candle. As noted by bryologist Sean Edwards in a letter published by BBC Wildlife Magazine in April 1994, its luminous portions are the first cells produced by germinating spores, which act like thousands of pear-shaped microscopic cat's eyes, collecting and concentrating even the faintest light. It is often found growing inside (and illuminating) rabbit holes, hence its 'rabbit candle' moniker, yielding a greenish-gold glow.

2) It is due to the bird having ingested phosphorescent microbes

As the luminescence of birds is external, and has actually disappeared in some cases following moulting, one would assume this to be a phenomenon associated exclusively with the bird's external covering, i.e. its plumage, rather than due to any digestive or other metabolic process (but see also Solution #4 for some ostensible exceptions to this statement).

Of course, we could speculate that if any phosphorescent microbes were inadvertently ingested with food, they could pass out of the bird's body within its faeces, which might then in some way become smeared upon its plumage, perhaps during preening, rendering it phosphorescent in turn.

Also, it should be borne in mind that not all phosphorescent bioluminescent fungi are harmless. One such species that is poisonous is Omphalotus olearius, the so-called jack-o'-lantern mushroom. This orange-gilled European fungus grows around the bases, stumps, and buried roots of hardwood trees (a related species, O. illudens, occurs in North America). A bird perching upon it may conceivably find itself with fragments of this fungus attached to its plumage, especially upon its breast feathers, rendering them phosphorescent, but if the bird then attempts to remove such fragments by preening, it could inadvertently swallow some of them and thereby become ill from the toxic nature of this fungus.

 

Jack-o'-lantern mushrooms (public domain)

Perhaps this is why some luminous birds that have been physically examined have been found to be in poor health, such as Rolfe's barn owl, and the specimen documented later here that was captured by a Norfolk engineer in his back garden.

Nevertheless, although such a scenario is not impossible, it is certainly not very plausible as an all-embracing solution.

3) It is due to the growth of feather-specific phosphorescent microbes upon the bird's breast plumage

In some ways paralleling the previous two proffered solutions, this third one proposes that phosphorescent bacteria or fungi may grow upon a bird's breast feathers if they have become damp or dirty. Propounded by British zoologist William P. Pycraft (1868-1942) among others during and beyond the Norfolk luminous owl 'flap', it derives support from the fact that breast feathers are often particularly dense (as with those of pigeons, for instance), thereby encouraging microbial proliferation upon them. Also, the breast is a difficult region for many birds, especially short-billed ones, to reach satisfactorily when preening.

 

How an owl with plumage infested with green-glowing phosphorescent fungi may look

Furthermore, in his article, de Sibour noted that avian luminescence is particularly powerful during flight. He sought to explain this occurrence as an effect of superoxygenation, pointing out that if a medium containing phosphorescent particles is agitated, that medium's luminescence does increase.

Consequently, this third suggested solution to the enigma of luminous birds would seem to be the most tenable of the three considered by me here so far. Even so, in view of the comparative rarity of glowing birds while concomitantly bearing in mind that a very great many birds must at some time or another possess damp and/or dirty breast feathers, this solution still falls some way short of providing a wholly satisfactory explanation.

4) It is due to some internal light-generating metabolic process

There are certain especially mystifying cases in the luminous bird files that if accurate seem to indicate that those individual birds' luminosity was directly linked not to any externally-sited phenomenon but instead to their own internal metabolism. For in each case, its external luminosity vanished once the bird itself had died. The earlier-mentioned gamekeeper Fred Rolfe who in 1897 had shot down a luminous sphere in Norfolk and found it to have been a barn owl in very poor condition made no mention of any such occurrence, but it was a notable feature of the two incidents now documented by me here.

The July 1911 issue of The Irish Naturalist contained several reports and reviews by different writers appertaining to luminous birds, especially luminous owls, but the report of especial interest here concerned a luminous specimen of North America's afore-mentioned great blue heron, as I'll be documenting below shortly.

 

How a luminous specimen of a great white heron, the white colour phase of the great blue heron, might look

In his own Irish Naturalist survey of reports, C.B. Moffat referred to a very interesting rural belief apparently prevalent in both Europe and North America that I hadn't previously encountered but which is very pertinent to the luminous great blue heron specimen. Here is what Moffat revealed:

A belief has long prevailed ascribing similar luminosity [to that of owls] to several of the herons and bitterns, which are supposed to be assisted in their nocturnal fishing operations by a phosphorescent light emitted from the "powder-down patches" of the breast-feathers, a light that is thought to serve, perhaps, the double purpose of attracting fish to the vicinity and helping the watchful bird to see them.

Powder-down feathers are specialized down feathers that grow continuously, in specific tracts, but are only produced by four taxonomically-unrelated bird groups (parrots, herons, bustards, and tinamous). In some such species, the tips of these feathers' barbules disintegrate, yielding fine powdery grains resembling dust or talc but composed of keratin; in others, the powder grains originate from cells surrounding the barbules of growing powder-down feathers. When a bird spreads these grains over its body during preening, they assist in protecting, ridding of parasites, and waterproofing the bird's plumage and skin, but well worth noting here is that they also confer upon its feathers a noticeable sheen.

 

James E. Harting (public domain)

Moffat then stated that wildlife observer James E. Harting had presented a resume of the principal evidence relating to this belief within a chapter entitled 'The Fascination of Light' contained in his book Recreations of a Naturalist (1906). In particular, Harting had referred to a detailed account by Philadelphia-based hunter W.J. Worrall of how he had shot a luminous specimen of the great blue heron. According to Worrall, the heron had possessed three phosphorescent spots – "one in front, and one on each side of the hips between the hips and the tail". The description went on to state that as the fatally-wounded bird expired, so too did its luminescence, its lustre "disappearing entirely with death".

Of interest, the location of this heron's three phosphorescent spots matches the location of some of the paired, dense patches of powder-down feathers in herons, which occur on their breast, flanks, and rump. So, might those phosphorescent spots simply have been extra-powdery (thence unusually pale and shiny) patches of powder-down feathers? Worth noting here is that in a Forest & Stream article written by American naturalist Charles S. Westcott and published in 1874, Westcott stated that he had experimented in a dark room with the powder from the powder-down feathers of least bitterns Botaurus exillis, the New World's smallest species of heron, "and found it to be of the same nature as 'fox-fire'". Moreover, J.P. Giraud, Jr., author of The Birds of Long Island (1844), affirmed that the powder-down of dead herons "gives out a pale glow, not unlike that produced by decayed timber, familiarly termed 'light wood,' or 'fox fire'".

 

A least bittern (public domain)

How, then, can we not only reconcile the above evidence provided independently by Westcott and Giraud that powder-down luminescence is not linked to a bird's life or death with Worrall's contradictory claim that the luminescence of the glowing heron that he had shot faded away once the bird itself died, but also (assuming its veracity) explain his latter claim?

The fundamental biological problem that Worrall's claim poses was highlighted by none other than Charles Fort – America's premier collector and chronicler of newspaper cuttings reporting anomalies across the entire spectrum of "damned" (i.e. scientifically-rejected or ignored) phenomena – when reporting in his book Lo! (1931) a second case in which this same luminescence-themed incongruity featured.

 

Charles Fort (public domain)

Fort referred to a report published on 7 February 1908 in Norwich's Eastern Daily Press newspaper (Norwich being a major city in Norfolk), in which engineer Edward S. Cannell of Lower Hellesdon, Norwich, claimed that on the early morning of 5 February when still dark he had seen something shining on a grass bank in his back garden, and that when it fluttered down a path there he discovered that it was a "bright and luminous" owl. He was able to capture the owl, which seemed to him to be ailing, and took it indoors, where it soon died. According to Cannell: "It was still luminous, but perhaps the glow was not as strong as when I saw it first" – i.e. its luminescence began fading following the owl's death. Moreover, in a sequel report, published by the same newspaper on 8 February, it was revealed that Cannell had taken the dead bird to a Mr Roberts, of Norwich-based taxidermists Roberts & Son, who claimed in an interview: "I have seen nothing luminous about it".

Needless to say, if both Cannell and Roberts were telling the truth, i.e. regarding the former's claim concerning the owl's brighter luminocity when alive than when newly dead and the latter's claim that when he later examined its corpse there was no luminosity at all, this is a most unexpected turn of events. For as Fort astutely pointed out:

Of course a phosphorescence of a bird, whether from decayed wood, or feather fungi, would be independent of life or death of the bird.

Indeed it would. Consequently, the only plausible explanation for any cases like Worrall's heron and Cannell's owl that feature synchronicity between a luminous bird's death and the disappearance of its luminescence would seem to be that the latter characteristic was caused by some intrinsic physiological, bioluminescent process – whereby the living bird was actively generating its luminescence via a specialised metabolic process, which obviously would therefore cease once the bird died.

 

Might a glowing owl's luminescence in reality be bioluminescence?

Yet although bioluminescence is well-documented from a wide range of organisms, it is currently unknown from any birds. (What has been confirmed, meanwhile, is that many bird species possess plumage that glows in the ultraviolet section of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum; but as human eyes cannot detect ultraviolet light, this particular type of plumage glow remains invisible to us.) Nor has this physiological condition been confirmed from any other tetrapod vertebrate (but click here for my investigation of a highly-controversial Trinidad lizard claimed by some researchers to be bioluminescent).

Of significance, furthermore, as revealed in his earlier-cited American Midland Naturalist article from 1947, is that during his researches into glowing birds, McAtee requested fellow American scientist Edwin R. Kalmbach to send him some specimens of the powder-down tracts from American black-crowned night herons Nycticorax nycticorax, a nocturnal species often claimed by eyewitnesses to be luminescent. He duly tested these tract specimens for the presence of luciferin and luciferase, the compounds inducing bioluminescence in known bioluminescent species, but he found no traces of them.

 

Black-crowned night heron (© ramidos/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.9 licence)

Consequently, even if certain bird species are indeed somehow bioluminescent, they nonetheless must also be externally luminescent if like herons they possess powder-downs, judging not only from McAtee's failure to link these feathers to metabolically-induced bioluminescence, but also to the above-reported findings of Westcott and Giraud that samples of these feathers' powder derived from dead birds continue to be luminescent. To my mind, however, this seems a superfluous and therefore impractical, implausible duplication of glowing ability.

5) It is due not to birds at all but features non-living BOLs instead

Investigators of the unexplained will be well aware that all manner of anomalous non-living phenomena involving mysterious glowing balls of light (frequently abbreviated to BOLs or BoLs) have been reported from many parts of the world, and include spooklights, foo fighters, ball lightning, and min-min lights, as well as more familiar, scientifically-resolved examples like the will-o'-the-wisp or ignis fatuus (resulting from the oxidation of phosphine, diphosphane, and methane, compounds produced via organic decay in marshes, bogs, and swamps). So might reports of luminous birds in reality involve BOL phenomena and not feature birds at all? Whereas it is certainly possible that some may have done, examples of such entities being shot down and found to be birds obviously cannot be explained away like this. Moreover, whereas it is true that the Haddiscoe sightings took place in marshes, where will-o'-the-wisp activity would not be surprising, others have occurred far from such terrain.

 

Coloured wood engraving of a will-o'-the-wisp in a marsh, by Charles H Whymper (© wellcomeimages.org/Wikipedia – CC BY 4.0 licence)

Equally problematic for a BOL explanation regarding luminous birds are those examples in which the luminous entities have been observed moving in an evidently conscious, self-aware manner. Relevant here is that in an exact reversal of the above-mentioned suggestion that luminous birds may be BOLs, many investigators of Australia's most famous unexplained BOL phenomenon, the mysterious min-min lights long encountered in Queensland, nowadays deem it more likely that these glowing enigmas are not of any meteorological or chemical-based origin but are actually living creatures, specifically barn owls, precisely because of the ostensible curiosity and inquisitiveness that min-mins demonstrate towards their human observers. Here is a prime example, as documented by me in my book The Unexplained (1996):

In the days of Australia's early European settlers, the Min-Min Hotel was a staging post between Boulia and Winton in western Queensland, whose best-known feature for the people living nearby were the ghostly balls of light that regularly flitted through the air, often white but sometimes changing colour. Still seen today and referred to as min-min lights, these are reminiscent of American spooklights and English will-o'-the-wisps, and display a marked if disconcerting tendency to follow and even taunt their perplexed observers.

For example: You Kids Count Your Shadows, a collection of Wiradjuri aboriginal lore and beliefs from New South Wales compiled by Frank Povah [and published in 1990], contains an account of a sheep drover who was checking his flock on horseback one evening when a blue min-min light appeared over his shoulder, and persistently followed him during his work. In exasperation, he chased after it, still on horseback, but was unable to catch up with it – until he gave up, and began riding home, whereupon the min-min cheekily appeared over his shoulder again!

 

 Man vs Min-Min – envisaging a rider in Australia's outback being trailed one evening by a min-min light (image created by me using Grok)

An alternative 'living entity' explanation for such sightings may be luminous insect swarms, which have also been suggested as explanations for certain UFO reports (click here for my ShukerNature article documenting this possibility), but a curious, inquisitive barn owl, especially if encountered while out hunting at night, could surely explain at least some min-min reports.

 

Reading back through my analysis of the five suggested solutions presented here, I think it most likely that as with so many other mysterious phenomena, luminous birds may not involve just a single solution but instead features a combination of different ones, with some cases resolved by one solution, certain others by a second, and so on. For it is abundantly clear that none of the solutions individually provides a comprehensive explanation for all of the cases documented here.

 

It is sad that such a captivating phenomenon as luminous birds has fallen out of scientific favour in modern times, especially as science is now equipped with so much readily-available sophisticated technology with which to investigate it thoroughly. Of course, this is due in no small way to the equally sad scarcity of reports nowadays. Saddest of all, however, as noted by David Clarke in his Fortean Studies article chronicling the luminous owls 'flap' reported in Norfolk during the early 1900s (referenced by me in Part 1 of this review), is that this scarcity may well be due in turn to how much rarer, as a result of habitat destruction and poisoning by pesticides, the barn owl has become in Britain and elsewhere during the century or more that has passed since the Norfolk 'flap'. Then again, if the numbers of this species, now extensively protected, do eventually re-attain their former level, perhaps this most delightful and whimsical of wildlife anomalies may once again attract the attention of professional and amateur enthusiasts and eyewitnesses all over again, back in fashion at long last.

 

Close encounter of the glowing kind!

Finally: worth noting here is that phosphorescent bacteria were declared the official answer to the anomaly of a leg of lamb that glowed in the dark and which had recently been purchased in the Worcestershire town of Kidderminster, England, during spring 1988. As reported by the Sandwell Express & Star newspaper on 12 March 1988, when the discovery was first announced there were fears of Chernobyl-derived radioactive fall-out from its nuclear power station's explosion two years earlier. However, Hereford-Worcester's county analyst and scientific advisor Geoffrey Keen rightly rejected this melodramatic notion in favour of phosphorescent bacteria being responsible, thereby solving with Sherlockian skills of deduction the curious case of the luminous leg of lamb.

If you haven't already done so, be sure to check out Part 1 of my luminous birds review article here on ShukerNature.

NB – All images of luminous owls included here were created by me using Grok X1.

 

More close encounters of the glowing kind!

 

 

FLYING PIGS - IN PURSUIT OF PIGASUS AND OTHER PORKERS ON THE WING!

Behold, Pigasus! (public domain)

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes - and ships - and sealing-wax -
Of cabbages - and kings -
And why the sea is boiling hot -
And whether pigs have wings."

   Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking-Glass


Some time ago, in a previous ShukerNature blog article (click here to read it), I wrote about flying elephants – as you do. So it was only ever going to be a matter of time before I followed that up with an article on flying pigs – and here it is.

When I was a child, and sometimes even as an adult, if ever I voiced an idea that she considered highly implausible, or overly fanciful (even by my normal standards!), my mother Mary Shuker would often give me a certain, very specific half-smile, her eyes dancing with humorous laughter, and say: "Yes, and pigs might fly!".

In one form or another, that expression, and its meaning as used by Mom, has been around for a very long time. Indeed, it possibly originated as "Pigs fly in the ayre with their tayles forward" – a rejoinder denoting amused or sarcastic disbelief, and appearing in a list of proverbs within the 1616 edition of John Withals's English-Latin dictionary A Shorte Dictionarie for Yonge Begynners.

Satirical American political news illustration from 1884 featuring Uncle Sam alongside the flying pig motif in its typical representation of something highly implausible if not downright impossible (public domain)

In any event, just like the fictitious beast known as the hippogriff initially was, it is synonymous nowadays with anything extremely doubtful or impossible to exist, or at least be even remotely likely to do so. Hence it is an example of a specific type of figure of speech known as an adynation (and for my ShukerNature coverage elucidating this conceptual link to the hippogriff, please click here).

Nevertheless, one of the numerous telling lessons in life that I've learnt by way of investigating cryptozoological cases is that if you look long enough and hard enough – and sometimes if you don't actually look at all – even the most implausible and unlikely things will be found. And so indeed it has been with flying pigs and other porkers on the wing, as will now be seen.

Pigs with wings – impossible things? (Image found abundantly online, but its creator and © owner are currently unknown to me, despite having made extensive searches – reproduction here on a strictly educational, non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

The first instance of an allegedly airborne entity of the porcine persuasion that I ever encountered, and which is still the most perplexing to me, featured in a short report from 1905 briefly paraphrased in Living Wonders: Mysteries and Curiosities of the Animal World – a unique and thoroughly fascinating compendium of reports and analyses concerning all manner of anomalous animals and animal anomalies compiled by veteran Fortean writer-researchers John Michell and Bob Rickard, and first published in 1982 (a much-expanded, fully-revised edition appeared in 2000, entitled Unexplained Phenomena: A Rough Guide Special, which combined Living Wonders with an earlier book written by the same authors, Phenomena, published in 1977, but, sadly, did not include any flying pigs within its pages).

I subsequently discovered a more detailed documentation of this very curious case in New Lands (1923) – one of the tomes in pioneering anomalies chronicler Charles Fort's peerless tetralogy documenting and passing comment upon all manner of unconventional occurrences.

Charles Fort (public domain)

Here is what Fort wrote:

Sept. 2, 1905—the tragedy of the space-pig:

In the English Mechanic, 86-100, Col. Markwick writes that, according to the Cambrian Natural Observer, something was seen in the sky. at Llangollen, Wales, Sept. 2, 1905. It is described as an intensely black object, about two miles above the earth's surface, moving at the rate of about twenty miles an hour. Col. Markwick writes: "Could it have been a balloon?" We give Col. Markwick good rating as an extra-geographer, but of the early, or differentiating type, a transitional, if not a sphinx: so he was not quite developed enough to publish the details of this object. In the Cambrian Natural Observer, 1905-35 — the journal of the Astronomical Society of Wales — it is said that, according to accounts in the newspapers, an object had appeared in the sky, at Llangollen, Wales, Sept. 2, 1905. At the schoolhouse, in Vroncysylite [= the village of Froncysyllte, or Fron for short]…the thing in the sky had been examined through powerful field glasses. We are told that it had short wings, and flew, or moved, in a way described as "casually inclining sideways." It seemed to have four legs, and looked to be about ten feet long. According to several witnesses it looked like a huge, winged pig, with webbed feet. "Much speculation was rife as to what the mysterious object could be."…

I don't know that my own attitude toward these data is understood, and I don't know that it matters in the least: also from time to time my own attitude changes: but very largely my feeling is that not much can be, or should be, concluded from our meager accounts, but that so often are these occurrences, in our fields, reported, that several times every year there will be occurrences that one would like to have investigated by someone who believes that we have written nothing but bosh, and by someone who believes in our data almost religiously.

One can readily understand and sympathise with Fort's evident bemusement at such a report. After all, how can a supposed sighting of a very sizeable pig with wings and webbed feet flying through the sky be rationally explained if not an outright hoax or a misidentification of truly monstrous proportions? To my knowledge, no similar creature has been reported above Wales (or, indeed, anywhere else) since then, so whatever this veritable Pigasus was, at least it wasn't breeding – which is a mercy in itself!

Might the Welsh flying pig have looked something like this? (public domain)

Had its one-off appearance taken place at some rather later date, I might have suggested that Wales's wayward Pigasus could have been some kind of man-made object that had originally been produced to feature in some form of advertising campaign but which had broken free from its tethering bonds and absconded skywards – if only because one such ostensibly unlikely incident featuring an airborne pig actually did occur.

On 4 December 1976, an article documenting this incident's bizarre events of the previous day, written by Clive Borrell, featured in Britain's most respectable, and respected, newspaper – London's daily broadsheet The Times. And the precise subject of that article? An enormous pink pig floating at an altitude of 7,000 ft and causing a very real, if decidedly surreal, hazard to aircraft!

Reports of this identified yet highly unexpected flying object, originating from unbelieving pilots, had found their way to police at London's Scotland Yard, as noted by Borrell in his article. And when he asked one of the Yard's representatives for more details, this is what he was given:

"At 10.25 this morning [3 December] a pink pig balloon measuring 10 metres by five metres [just over 30 ft by 15 ft], escaped from its mooring in the car park of Battersea power station. It was there to advertise the pop group, Pink Floyd, but it broke loose.

One of our helicopters on traffic patrol intercepted a radio message from a light aircraft to the control tower at Heathrow airport. The pilot was heard to say: "I've just been overtaken by a pink elephant at 7,000 ft."

The helicopter crew offered to help because the control tower could not plot the creature on their radar.

…We escorted it across London as far as Crystal Palace. Now it's out of our area."

Wisely ignoring the above-quoted pilot's evidently poor zoological knowledge in confusing a pig with an elephant, Borrell went on to note that by midday the huge hog-shaped balloon (filled with helium) was 20 miles east of London, passing over the Essex suburbs, and that the Civil Aviation Authority was very amused indeed by this unheralded sky beast.

How it must have looked when the floating pig balloon broke free – this photo is actually of the pig's return in September 2011 – see later for details (© Christopher Hilton/Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)

Later that day, Essex police reported that the pig was beginning to lose height, drifting now at an altitude of only 5,000 ft – perhaps it was hungry, they speculated. But by mid-afternoon it had clearly regained strength, and altitude, soaring majestically now at a height of 18,000 ft above Chatham, and seemingly heading towards continental Europe. Might it therefore be not so much a homing pigeon as a homing pig, making its way back to Germany, where it was originally manufactured?

Tragically, we shall never know, because several hours later, as revealed by Borrell in his Times article, the pig began to deflate and eventually came down that same evening to land on a farm at Chilham, near Canterbury, Kent, its escape to victory thwarted, its great adventure ended. In all seriousness, however, its danger to aircraft had been deemed sufficiently severe for flights at Heathrow Airport, London's biggest, to be cancelled.

(As a brief digression, I should note here that I didn't see Borrell's article when it was originally published in December 1976, but came upon it a decade later, reprinted within a wonderful compendium of Times articles. published in 1985, which had been compiled by Stephen Winkworth, and was entitled More Amazing Times! Moreover, I was so delighted to see this article that I actually purchased the entire book just to have it, because I knew that one day I'd be able to make use of it – and now, albeit many years later, that day has finally come!)

Floyd Pig, the embodiment of Pink Floyd's album, Animals, where the Pigs take over in a George Orwellian world - backdrop from a Pink Floyd concert tour (© Craig Carper/Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)

Researching this marvellously memorable incident, I uncovered certain additional details, which are as follows. As all Pink Floyd fans will instantly confirm, the purpose of this giant inflatable pig – which had been officially dubbed Algie by the band – was to advertise and appear upon the cover of their latest album, Animals, released in 1977, and which does indeed feature a photograph of it, floating between two of Battersea Power Station's chimneys – the photo being produced after Algie had been recovered, repaired, and reinflated. Three of the five tracks on Animals feature pigs in their titles.

Algie had been built by the artist Jeffrey Shaw, assisted by design team Hipgnosis, after being designed by Floyd bassist and songwriter Roger Waters. Algie subsequently appeared at a number of Pink Floyd concerts, originally still pink in colour, but later black. After Waters quit Pink Floyd in 1985, he continued to feature inflatable pigs in many of his solo concerts, often brightly adorned with slogans, and sometimes deliberately released into the sky.

Two views of flying slogans-inscribed pig from Roger Waters show at Hollywood Bowl on 13 June 2007 (© BeautifulFlying/Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

On 26 September 2011, an Algie replica was securely tethered over Battersea Power Station and photographed to promote the band's reissuing of their first 14 studio albums via their Why Pink Floyd…? re-release campaign. And a pig floating above the station was also glimpsed in British movie director Danny Boyle's much-acclaimed Isles of Wonder short film shown as part of the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics held in London, UK.

Giant pig balloon flying over Battersea Power Station, 26 September 2011, as part of Pink Floyd's Why Pink Floyd...? re-release campaign (© Bex Walton/Wikipedia - CC BY 2.0 licence)

Clearly, old flying pigs never die, they just keep floating on…

Speaking of old flying pigs: there are records on file concerning such exotica that date surprisingly far back in time. Take, for instance, the intriguing American account that appeared in The History of New England, 1630-1649, written by English Puritan explorer John Winthrop, who settled in Massachusetts during 1630 and became the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The above-cited book is a transcription of his original notes, and was published in 1908. In it can be found the following passage:

In this year one James Everell, a sober, discreet man, and two others, saw a great light in the night at Muddy River. When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square; when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine: it ran as swift as an arrow towards Charlton, and so up and down about two or three hours.

Not so much ball lightning as boar lightning, it would seem. One for the meteorologists rather than the mammalogists to ponder over, I suspect.

Portrait of John Winthrop (public domain)

As ShukerNature readers will already be aware, medieval illuminated manuscripts have long fascinated me, because of the extraordinary diversity of bizarre beasts painstakingly portrayed around the margins of their text (as inscribed upon unbound, usually double-sided pages known as folios, whose upper side or verso is usually abbreviated to v, and whose lower side or recto as r). Known as marginalia grotesques, they occur in every imaginable, and often entirely unimaginable, form. I have already documented some of these extraordinary creatures here (snail-cats and other malacomorphs), here (an elephant rat), here (a Star Wars Yoda-lookalike), and here (a very sinister, sharp-toothed Nosferatu doppelgänger).

Was it possible, therefore, that one or two pigs with wings might also be found lurking among the illuminated letters of such manuscripts, quite literally hogging the limelight? There was only one way to find out, and that was to peruse a representative selection of them (happily, many of the most famous of these exquisite medieval works are present in fully-scanned form online). So that's what I did – and two delightful examples were duly uncovered.

Winged pig from Le Livre des Hystoires du Mirouer, Depuis la Création, Jusqu' Après la Dictature de Quintus Cincinnatus (Bibliothèque Nationale de France/public domain)

One of these, a somewhat belligerent boar with a pair of bright red bat-like wings, turned up in Le Livre des Hystoires du Mirouer, Depuis la Création, Jusqu' Après la Dictature de Quintus Cincinnatus, a beautiful illuminated manuscript dating from the 15^th Century and consisting of 41 folios. It is currently held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, where it is listed as BNF Fr 328. The winged pig is present in the bottom left-hand corner of the margin on f 29 v (i.e. on the verso side of folio 29).

The other one, sporting a pair of proportionately larger, elaborately pleated wings, was present in the Katherine Hours, an illuminated Book of Hours (click here for details of what these are) dating from around 1480-1485. A lavishly-illustrated illuminated manuscript consisting of over 100 folios, it was created at Tours in France by Jean Bourdichon (1457-1521), who was court painter to four successive French kings. It is held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and earns its name from the intertwined initials 'I' and 'K', which appear frequently in the borders of the manuscript, with the 'I' embraced by a loop that forms the arms of the 'K'. As noted by the museum's online page devoted to this manuscript, the letters are likely to be the initials of a husband and wife who commissioned it. The 'K' probably stands for Katherine, because the manuscript contains several prayers to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, after whom women in medieval France were often named. The winged pig appears in the middle of the right-hand margin of folio 83, whose principal feature is a large central illustration entitled 'The Man of Sorrows at the Last Judgement'.

Winged pig from the Katherine Hours (J. Paul Getty Museum/public domain)

As for the purposes of these and other zoological grotesques, I noted in my previous ShukerNature articles regarding such entities that it is very likely that many were created by the monks producing illuminated manuscripts as humorous or even slyly rebellious adornments that also helped them to break or lighten the very lengthy periods of excessive tedium endured throughout the very painstaking process involved in the preparation of such manuscripts.

Moving forward to the present day, greatly deserving of mention here is a very different but equally eyecatching commemoration of winged pigs in art. Namely, the quartet of statues known as the Cincinnati Flying Pigs with the Fish Head Shrouds, each statue standing 4.5 ft tall, perched atop a smokestack column, and with a fish head shroud sending forth a golden cable attached to the column. Created by the Doug Freeman Studio, they were commissioned by Andrew Leicester with the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Museum, as part of the entry for the Sawyer Point Park, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Cincinnati has long been nicknamed Porkopolis, due to its historical importance as a major centre of the American pig industry, so if winged pigs were ever going to appear anywhere in the USA, this was always where they would do so. Furthermore, during the Big Pig Gig of 2000 and the Big Pig Gig: Do-Re-Wee of 2012, events organised by a community employment programme called ArtWorks, numerous life-sized fibreglass pig statues of varying forms and colours were temporarily installed throughout Cincinnati's downtown area, and many of these were winged pigs.

Another spectacular work of art is the painting Fliegende Schweine ('Flying Pigs'), produced by the acclaimed modern-day German artist, designer, and sculptor Michael Maschka, a leading follower of the Fantastic Realism school of art.

Fliegende Schweine, by Michael Maschka (© Michael Maschka/Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Sadly, flying pigs have not featured extensively in mythology, so often a sanctuary for esoteric entities of the zoological variety. Perhaps the most notable example, occurring in Greek mythology, is Chrysaor. Resulting from a liaison between Medusa (in her ravishing pre-gorgon days) and the sea god Poseidon (having assumed mortal human form at the time), he is variously depicted as a young human giant or a great winged boar. However, he was not born until Medusa was beheaded by Perseus, arising from drops of blood seeping from her neck stump. By a peculiar quirk that is so often the norm amid the bizarre biology all too prevalent in myths and legends, Chrysaor's twin brother was none other than that noble winged steed Pegasus, who was also born from slain Medusa's blood according to some versions of this tale.

Certain items of ancient Greek ware depict Chrysaor. These most famously include an Athenian black-figure pyxis vase portraying him as a young human boy, and dating from c.525-475 BC, which is housed in the Louvre Museum, Paris, France; and an Athenian red-figure kylix vase portraying him as a winged boar on the shield of his son, the three-bodied giant Geryon, and dating from c.510-500 BC, which is housed at the Staatliche Antikensammlungen (State Collections of Antiquities), a major archaeological museum in Munich, Germany.

Less familiar is the winged sow that according to the Greek-speaking Roman scholar Aelian (c.175-235 AD), writing in his 3-volume work On Animals, once terrorised the ancient Greek city of Clazomenae, whose ruins can be found in what is now the Anatolian Turkish town of Urla. Originally situated on the mainland, Clazomenae was subsequently moved to an island just off the coast, lying west of what was then the Greek city of Smyrna, but is now the Anatolian city of Izmir.

A flying pig used as a trademark by Baldwin, Farnum & Shapleigh, as seen on this bill of sale from 1875 (public domain)

Flying pigs sometimes occur as publicity emblems, as seen earlier here with Pink Floyd. Other notable examples of such use include serving as the official mascot for the Grand Prairie Airhogs (a semi-professional baseball team from Grand Prairie in Texas), as the logo of the Flying Pig Brewing Co in Everett, Washington (in operation as a microbrewery or brewpub from 1997 to 2005), and as the official mascot for the Chesapeake Bay log canoe Edmee S. In addition, the presence of flying pigs featured in many promotional posters for the fantasy movie Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010), and it goes without saying that there are a fair few Flying Pig pubs, hotels, and restaurants worldwide.

Much as I would love to do so, I cannot lay claim to having invented the name 'Pigasus' – frustratingly, that singular honour(?) must go to children's author Ruth Plumly Thompson. For it was she who included a flying winged pig of that name in various of the 21 novels written by her during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1970s that were sequels to the 14 original Oz books authored by L. Frank Baum. Pigasus first appeared in Thompson's Pirates in Oz (1931), but played a much bigger role in The Wishing Horse of Oz (1935).

Pigs with wings that can fly evidently have great appeal for youngsters, because they have also occurred in a number of later, non-Oz children's books. These include Clementina the Flying Pig (1939) by Oskar Lebeck, Perfect the Pig (1980) by Susan Jeschke, Porcellus the Flying Pig (1988) by Judy Corbalis, The History of Flying Pigs (1991) by A.A. Barber, and Cincy the Flying Pig (2016) by Jenniger Elig. Plus, as if flying pigs weren't extraordinary enough already, there is also Herbert the Flying Blue Pig (2015) by Loveleen Bahl.

John Steinbeck's famous Pigasus emblem (© owner presently unknown to me despite making considerable searches online; reproduced here on a strictly educational, non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

Moreover, the celebrated American novelist John Steinbeck designed a small winged pig emblem that he too dubbed Pigasus, its origin stemming from a dismissive comment made to him long ago by his college professor who was sceptical about his claims that one day he would become a famous writer, replying sarcastically that this would happen only when pigs flew. Consequently, once Steinbeck did achieve fame, he made a point of inscribing Pigasus's image in his books as a personal insignia, along with the cod Latin phrase "Ad astra per alia porci", which he intended to mean "To the stars on the wings of a pig", but which actually translates more closely as "To the stars through other pigs".

(Incidentally, history also records a non-winged Pigasus of note – a 145-lb domestic pig of that name that was nominated for President of the USA on 23 August 1968 by an anti-establishment and countercultural revolutionary group known as the Youth International Party – but that, as they say, is another story entirely.)

Beautiful wooden winged pig mobile from Bali, which traditionally serves as a spirit chaser (photo appears in uncredited form on numerous websites but its original source is currently unknown to me despite my having made considerable searches - reproduced here on a strictly educational, non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

Based upon the traditional folk belief that they will keep evil spirits at bay while a person is sleeping, chasing them far away, in Bali and certain other Indonesian islands wooden mobiles, intricately carved and beautifully painted in bright colours, are often hung above beds. Equally popular today as exotic souvenirs, these eyecatching mobiles frequently take the form of various familiar animals, but sporting a pair of large detachable wings. Amid my own eclectic menagerie of monsters, mystery beasts, and all manner of magical creatures, I have a Balinese winged toad mobile (click here) and also a Balinese winged elephant mobile (click here), but recently I spotted online a photograph (original source unknown) of an exquisite porcine version, resplendent in crimson and gold, and I have since seen photos of others too, in an array of different colours and styles of carving, so the pig is presumably deemed in Indonesia to be a successful spirit chaser.

Last but definitely not least: here is my very own Pigasus, a small but sweet figurine ornament that I purchased from some collector's/bric-a-brac fair many years ago, but which bears no manufacturer's label or identifying details of any kind, so I have no idea of his origin or history. Consequently, if anyone reading this chapter could provide me with any details, I'd be very greatly appreciative. After all, it's not every day that I purchase a pig with wings, so when I do I'd certainly like to know something about him!

My very own Pigasus – provenance and production details currently unknown (© Dr Karl Shuker)