Feather beds, cockfights and midnight flights to the moon

From seeing feathers as omens of death to saving soldiers with homing pigeons, our interactions with birds have always been contradictory. Roy and Lesley Adkins select five chapters from avian history to illuminate this complex relationship

- Roy and Lesley Adkins

1 Feathers, fowl, and fear

Why the superstitious cast birds as omens of disaster and death

Due to their apparent link between the heavens and Earth, birds have long been revered, feared, and assumed to be capable of predicting the weather, marriage partners, disaster, and death. While goose feathers and down didn't have any deadly connotations, many Britons were deeply against having game feathers in their feather mattresses and pillows, with pigeon feathers being particularly reviled.

In 19th-century Wiltshire, the Reverend William Grey said that whenever his housekeeper made pigeon pie, the feathers were burned: "She assured me that if a single feather found its way into a bed or pillow, they would be 'dying hard' [experiencing a lingering death] until the feather was removed." And Charlotte Latham, a vicar's wife, recorded: "You must not turn a feather-bed on a Sunday, or you will have fearful dreams for the rest of the week."

Peacock feathers (left) were especially dreaded, something that Hull headmaster John Nicholson mentioned in 1890: "Though peacock feathers are now fashionable and aesthetic, they are looked upon with disfavor by those of the old school, for these feathers were always deemed unlucky.” He knew somebody who had burned an expensive gift - a peacock-feather firescreen - because of the terror of ill luck.

2 Britain's bloody sporting obsession

The country's passion for cockfighting united poor schoolboys and kings

Cockfighting, known as "the sod", was for centuries Britain's most popular sport, reaching a peak in the 18th century and banned only in 1849 (1895 in Scotland). Enjoyed by all classes, this national obsession was underpinned by gambling. Boys were actively encouraged to train fighting cocks for matches that were held in their schools on Shrove Tuesday.