Birds

Checklist of the Birds of Westeros

May 23, 2019 by Dragan 2 Comments

Now that the Mad Queen is dead, Brandon the Broken, First of His Name, is the King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Six Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm; and peace is restored in all the kingdoms, would you want to bird Westeros? I am not talking the filming locations, but the imaginary kingdoms themselves. How many birds have you spotted in 8 seasons?

In the 70+ episodes, I noticed only the homing Ravens (caged/domesticated) and Pigeons (domestic – in pie). Yes, there were Chicken, too (I remember the chicken soup, not the birds). And some Falcon, most likely mixed breed, because it belonged to falconry, not the skies. Can you imagine such a vast world devoid of birds (while they can fly, dragons do not count – not birds)?

Why would any birder ever want to visit Westeros?

Illustration HBO

To correct me, the Westerosi Checklist by the gameofthrones.fandom.com/ is somewhat longer, or so they claim. Supposedly, all of these were recorded in the Seven Kingdoms, albeit most likely only in the books (of which I read only the first):

Chickens (domesticated)
Crows
Ducks (domesticated)
Eagles
Falcons – Gyrfalcon
Geese (domesticated)
Hawks
Owls
Parrots
Partridges
Pheasants
Pigeons
Ravens (domesticated)
Sparrows
Vultures

And this is all. Why, oh why George R.R. Martin isn’t a birder himself, to create a proper world with most ecological niches filled, oh why?

Written by Dragan
Dragan Simic is obsessively passionate about two things – birding and travelling in search of birds, and that has taken him from his native Balkans to the far shores of Europe and the Mediterranean, southern Africa, India and Latin America. His 10,000 Birds blog posts were Highly Commended in the International Category of the 2015 BBC Wildlife Blogger Awards. Birder by passion and environmental scientist by education, he is an ecotourism consultant, a field researcher and a bird blogger who always thinks that birding must be better behind that next bend in the road, and that the best bird ever is – the next lifer. He tweets as @albicilla66