This is Bird Note.

For the better part of 2,000 years, the wax wing was credited with an amazing power.

It was believed in all earnestness that these gentle, crested fruit eaters glowed in the dark.

Pliny reported that their feathers were said to shine-like flames

in the dark forests of Central Europe.

The Latin scholar Salinas went further.

Not only did wax wings throw off a warm glow, he said,

the Germans used captive birds to light their way when they were obliged to

travel by night. But at the end of the 16th century, the great Italian birdman, Ulysses

Aldrovandi, was skeptical. In his 12-volume encyclopedia of ornithology, Aldrovandi admits that the waxy red tips on the bird's wing feathers are beautiful,

but he dismisses the notion that they give off any kind of light. How could he be so sure? For nearly three

months, he writes, I kept a wax wing alive in my house and observed it through the night.

He goes on to note, the bird stubbornly failed to emit flames or light of any kind.

Today, no one thinks that wax wings glow in the dark,

but that doesn't stop these winter nomads from brightening the bird watchers' day.

For Bird Note, I'm Mary McCann.