The Windhover The Windhover "The Windhover" is a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889). It was written on May 30, 1877, but not published until 1918, when it was included as part of the collection "Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins". Hopkins dedicated the poem "to Christ our Lord". "Windhover" is another name for the common kestrel ("Falco tinnunculus"). The name refers to the bird's ability to hover in midair while hunting prey. In the poem, the narrator admires the bird as it hovers in the air, suggesting that it controls the wind as a man may control a horse. The bird then
The Bird-catcher and the Blackbird The Bird-catcher and the Blackbird The Bird-catcher or Fowler and the Blackbird was one of "Aesop's Fables", numbered 193 in the Perry Index. In Greek sources, it featured a lark, but French and English versions have always named the blackbird as the bird involved. Modern European retellings of the fable include Giovanni Maria Verdizotti's 1570 version, which has a lark as the bird. The nearly contemporary French edition of 1582 however features a blackbird, and this is followed in Roger L'Estrange's 1692 collection. An alternative tradition dating back to the "Greek Anthology" maintains that the blackbird is under the special