Phoenix Preserve

Recently I read this article
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090515/ap_on_re_as/as_indonesia_bird_beach_3)
on the maleo, a bird native to Sulawesi, which put me in mind of the mythical phoenix. The maleo is mostly black, but has prominent pink plumage, yellow facial skin, and red-orange beak color. Both of these colors would lend themselves to the idea of flame, especially in climes where the birds are generally less particolored than in tropic lands. Even the black back of the maleo could be attached to the idea of flame, by way of ash.


The female maleo lays her remarkably large egg in volcanic sand or soil and wanders off. This is not a species where a hen and her brood troop gamely through the forest! When the egg hatches, the young maleo is ready to fly and forage. A full-grown bird emerging from the hot sands would indeed appear to be self-generating. There's no particular association of the maleo with spices, such as the frankincense with which (according to Herodotus) the phoenix immolates himself, but spices came from a wide area of the ancient world, and I am not arguing that the legend of the phoenix reflects biology with full accuracy (see Pliny the Elder for particularly egregious examples). I am, however, convinced that reports of this remarkable bird contributed to the myth of the phoenix.