The Stymphalian birds (Ancient Greek: Στυμφαλίδες ὄρνιθες) are a flock of voracious birds in Greek mythology, named for Lake Stymphalia in Arcadia. Tradition credits them with bronze beaks, sharp metallic feathers they could launch like darts, and poisonous dung. Driving them from the marsh was the sixth labour of Heracles, who scared them aloft with a bronze rattle given by Athena and shot them with arrows. Survivors fled to the island of Aretias in the Euxine Sea, where the Argonauts later met them.
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I.Characteristics
The Stymphalian birds are described as man-eating creatures with bronze beaks, sharp metallic feathers they could launch as weapons, and poisonous excrement. Pausanias, describing birds still associated with Stymphalus in his day, says they flew against hunters and wounded them with their beaks; bronze or iron armour was pierced, but a garment of thick cork caught the beaks as bird-lime catches small birds. In size and form he likens them to cranes and to the ibis, but with more powerful, less crooked beaks.
Divine affiliations vary: some traditions call them pets of Artemis; others say they were reared by Ares. They were said to have migrated to the Arcadian marsh to escape wolves, then bred rapidly and swarmed over the countryside, destroying crops, fruit trees, and townspeople.
II.The Sixth Labour of Heracles
Eurystheus ordered Heracles to chase the birds from Lake Stymphalia. Apollodorus places the lake in a deep wood at the city of Stymphalus, where countless birds had taken refuge from wolves. The marshy ground would not bear Heracles' weight, so he could not reach the nests on foot.
Athena gave him brazen castanets (krotala / crotalum) that she had received from Hephaestus. Standing on a mountain that overhung the lake, Heracles clashed the rattle; the birds could not abide the sound, fluttered up in fright, and he shot them as they rose. Some versions tip his arrows with the Hydra's poisonous blood. In certain tellings the labour was discounted because of Athena's help. Heracles brought slain birds to Eurystheus as proof; the survivors fled Arcadia forever.
Apollonius of Rhodes has the seer Phineus advise the Argonauts to use a similar bronze rattle against birds on the island of Ares (Aretias) in the Euxine — birds identified with the Stymphalian flock that Heracles had driven from Arcadia. Hyginus likewise places Stymphalian birds that shoot their feathers as arrows on the island of Mars.
III.Alternative tradition at Stymphalus
According to Mnaseas, the "birds" were not birds at all but women, daughters of Stymphalus and Ornis, whom Heracles killed for refusing him hospitality. At the temple of Stymphalian Artemis, however, they were represented as birds, and behind the temple stood white marble statues of maidens with the legs of birds — a local cult image that kept both readings in view.
IV.In art
Attic black-figure amphorae of the mid-to-late sixth century BC show Heracles shooting or slinging at the flock above the lake. A Roman mosaic from Llíria in Spain includes the labour among the cycle of Heracles' deeds. Later European painters returned to the subject: Albrecht Dürer's Hercules Killing the Stymphalian Birds (1500) and Gustave Moreau's treatments of Heracles at Lake Stymphalos are among the best-known modern images.