Bird vs. Serpent

"Should I fall to fang and to scale;
for the nest, the flock must prevail."

There is a recurring mythological motif where giant birds or birdlike creatures (often, but not always, a Noble Bird of Prey) fight against reptilian monsters, typically a snake, a sea serpent, or a dragon. The bird will use its beak and talons to grip and rip, maybe drop its foe from heights after flying up carrying it. Meanwhile, the snake will coil and bite.

This is often a symbolic representation of opposites: most obvious is the the Sky above versus the Sea or the Earth below (and thus many serpents are of the "Sea" kind), but as informed by this Tumblr post, by extension there's sacred vs unholy, light versus darkness, and Order Versus Chaos. There's also subtext of Clash of Evolutionary Levels, where it's the warm-blooded and advanced birds that soar above, and the primitive reptiles that crawl under. What Measure Is a Non-Cute? and Snakes Are Sinister plays a part in this trope as well.

This concept can be tied to the chaoskampf, a recurring motif in Indo-European and Middle Eastern mythologies pitting a sky or thunder god representing order against a serpent or dragon representing chaos. It doesn't innately lead into this trope, as the deities were usually humanoid, but it's a fairly simple stretch to associate a sky god with avian motifs, to depict them as an angel-like Winged Humanoid, or to use birds to represent a celestial figure.

Taxonomically speaking, both groups of animals are technically reptiles, but birds are fluffier, cuter, and more social than the evil serpent.

See also Primate Versus Reptile, which has similar ideals involved. However, this trope is much older than that one. Also compare Snake Versus Mongoose for another famous case of Animal Jingoism involving snakes.

---

Examples

Anime & Manga

• Basilisk: The opening to every episode starts with a narration while a battle between a snake and a bird of prey takes place, with each inflicting serious, possibly fatal, wounds on the other.
• Heaven's Design Team: One of the many contrasts that fuels the professional rivalry between Mizushima and Kanamori is that the former invented serpents and the latter invented birds. One chapter involves an evolutionary arms race between their creations when Kanamori creates a weaver bird that builds false openings in its nest to foil predators (especially egg-eating snakes), and eventually escalates to Kanamori inventing a bird that preys on snakes (the secretary bird).
• Naruto: During the final confrontation between Sasuke and Orochimaru in Shippuden, Sasuke delivers a badass speech where he metaphorically compares their battle to a battle between a snake and a hawk. From Sasuke's point of view, the snake (aka Orochimaru) can dream all he wants about cheating his own nature and trying to claim wings from a hatchling in the nest, because in the end that hatchling will turn into a mighty hawk (Sasuke) and turn the snake into its prey. The entire fight is contrasted with a hawk hunting snakes somewhere outside of Orochimaru's hideout.

Art

• Ferruginous Thrush,^note This bird is now called the brown thrasher by the American naturalist John James Audubon, depicts a small flock of birds defending their nest from a predatory snake.
• The Polish artist Stanislaus Szukalski made a sculpture of the Rooster of Gaul (a symbol of France) in combat with a three-headed serpent, representing Nazi Germany. He designed it as a tribute to La Résistance, and originally hoped to built a much larger version as a monument but couldn't get the funding.

Film — Animation

• The Angry Birds Movie 2: The subplot involves some Hatchlings and piglets trying to rescue some eggs they're trying to watch over before they hatch from a mother snake after said eggs get washed off to sea. They end up taking the wrong eggs, but the mother snake arrives with the correct eggs, now having hatched into more Hatchlings.

Film — Live-Action

• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Rodan vs King Ghidorah. Rodan is a pterosaur-like Brutal Bird of Prey kaiju, while Ghidorah is a Draconic Abomination based on the serpentine Hydra and Beast from the Book of Revelations. Ghidorah defeats Rodan with ease and forces the later to become his underling.
• The Lord of the Rings: In the film adaptation of the books, the "fell beasts" that the nine Nazgûl ride upon are given a more reptilian appearance (as opposed to the somewhat birdlike description given in the books), giving the impression of gigantic, hideous, winged serpents. At the final Battle of the Morannon, all of the remaining Nazgûl gather to menace the Men of the West, led by Aragorn, but are driven back by the timely intervention of the Eagles of Manwë.

Literature

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland plays this for laughs when Alice accidentally elongates her own neck with size-changing mushrooms, resulting in a nesting pigeon assuming that she's a serpent that wants to eat its eggs.
• The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump has the heroes face an evil pantheon, so they summon the Garuda Bird for help. It has an inborn hatred toward snakes, and one of the major members of the pantheon being a lizard turns out to be enough to trigger that.
• Chronicles of Ancient Darkness: The deuteragonist Renn is a member of the Raven Clan, and her most personal enemy is her Evil Counterpart of a mother, Seshru the Viper Mage.
• Fighting Fantasy: Magehunter, being set in the Middle-East inspired land of Kallamehr, has an encounter where you can get whisked away by a Giant Roc to the bird's nest... only to be suddenly ambushed by a Winged Serpent, where an aerial battle commences with you clinging on the Roc's talons. If the Roc loses, you'll end up falling to your death.
• Dr. Franklin's Island: Miranda and Arnie are often at odds. When they're separately captured by a Mad Scientist, subject to a Forced Transformation, they later meet mentally thanks to Electronic Telepathy. Arnie conceals that he was turned into a snake monster as he dangles what Miranda sees as false self-serving hope in front of her. Miranda, who is a bird monster, calls Arnie a snake and attacks him, and he appears briefly in snake form. Later they meet again in the flesh and put their differences aside, not-quite-apologizing, so they can fight the Mad Scientist.
• Harry Potter:
  • Although they never fight each other, Harry's and Voldemort's trusted animal companions fit this trope. Harry's owl Hedwig is both a messenger and a treasured friend, while Voldemort's snake Nagini is both a servant and valued attack animal.
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Harry is saved from the basilisk in the titular chamber when Fawkes the phoenix arrives, attacks the serpent and tears out its eyes. The bird later helps Harry, Ron, and Ginny escape the chamber by flying them out.
• The Hunger Games: This conflict plays out symbolically between Katniss Everdeen and President Coriolanus Snow. As her token in the Hunger Games arena, Katniss wears a pin shaped like a mockingjay, a songbird beloved by her late father and an unintentional reminder of a past Capitol humiliation. As the series goes on, Katniss' relationship with the mockingjay becomes more and more literal, to the point that both she and the bird become leading symbols of the new rebellion to overthrow the Capitol. President Snow, meanwhile, is compared to a snake on multiple occasions; his surgically altered features make him resemble one, his cunning and duplicity are very snake-like, and it's later revealed that he rose to power by poisoning his enemies ("the perfect weapon for a snake").
  • In the prequel novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the symbolism is also present. A teenaged Coriolanus Snow is assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird, a tribute in the 10th Hunger Games. A performer by trade, her singing is a key part of the story, and she is the one who first mentions mockingjays to young Snow. While Snow is not explicitly associated with snakes quite yet, Lucy manages to survive an onslaught of mutated snakes in the arena thanks to his help, and towards the end of the novel he poisons his first enemy, starting him on the path that will eventually lead to where readers met him back in the original trilogy.
• The Jungle Book: In Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the songbirds don't directly fight the cobras, but they're crucial in distracting them long enough for Rikki to fight them.
• Ringing Bell: Chirin tries to protect some eggs from a snake after it kills their mother, but accidentally breaks them during the scuffle.
• The Silmarillion: In the final days of the War of Wrath, Morgoth unleashed a hundred of his newest creations, the winged fire-breathing dragons, upon the combined forces of the Valar, Men and Elves and nearly defeated them. The arrival of Eärendil and Thorondir, the Lord of the Eagles, and a host of thousands of Great Eagles only managed to turn the tide of the battle, but only just, as for all the might of the Great Eagles it still took over a day and half for them to slay every dragon.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Symbolically played out in the backstory of the Ghiscari Wars. Thousands of years prior to the main storyline, the emerging Valyrian Freehold waged a series of five wars against the ancient Ghiscari empire to become the dominant power on the continent of Essos. The Ghiscari emblem was the harpy — a legendary bird-human hybrid — and, while harpies do not actually exist in the world, their symbolism remains prominent. Meanwhile, the Freehold had actual dragons at their disposal, filling the serpent half and allowing them to utterly defeat the Ghiscari.
• The Spiderwick Chronicles: The fifth book, The Wrath of Mulgarath, involves a battle between a very bird-like griffin and a dragon. Author Tony Diterlizzi has said that he had this motif in mind when coming up with that scene.
• Tales of the Magic Land: It's mentioned that the tyrannical leader of a tribe of giant eagles died after challenging the King of Serpents to a duel out of vanity.
• The Underneath: Hawk Man (a hawk who can transform into a human, then in a human form) fights Grandmother (a snake who can transform into a human, in snake form having already gotten a Shapeshifter Mode Lock over her tricking Night Song into transforming into a snake permanently. He seals her in a jar but dies from her venom.

Live-Action TV

• LEGO Masters: In Season 1, Tyler and Amy won the finale with their Lego creation titled "Treasure of the Griffin", which depicts a griffin (complete with motorized, moving parts) perched atop a tower in the middle of a fantasy landscape, protecting its nest from an attacking lizard-like monster slithering its way up the tower.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power shows in its Opening Monologue, a Great Eagle being defeated and killed by a Fell Beast during the Battle of the Sudden Flame. The scene seems to answer the question of why The Great Eagles didn't help the Fellowship in the movies, a question that was often put by the regular fans.

Mythology and Religion

• Arabian Nights: In Sinbad's second voyage, he becomes stranded on an island inhabited by Roc Birds. He escapes by attaching himself to one of the enormous birds when it flies away and lets it carry him to the mainland, where it lands after reaching a valley home to monstrous snakes large enough to swallow an elephant whole, these snakes being the rocs' main prey.
• Aztec Mythology: The Aztecs saw an eagle devouring a serpent while it was perched on a cactus plant and took it as a sign to build their capital city, Tenochtitlan (today's Mexico City), there. In commemoration of this, the Mexican national flag has an eagle holding a snake in its talons.
• Chinese Mythology: The Fenghuang is a Divine Bird which is sometimes depicted attempting to kill a snake with its talons.
• Egyptian Mythology: Although Egyptian myths had a number of benign serpentine figures, the demonic serpent God of Evil Apep was not one of them. Every night, he would do battle with the sun god Ra, who was traditionally depicted with the head of an eagle.
• Garuda is a character who appears in various legends from Asian cultures (particularly those that practise Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism) and is generally depicted as a giant bird or Winged Humanoid. His Hindu Mythology version has a vicious rivalry with the snake-like nagas, and fights them at every available opportunity.
• Native American Mythology: In many tribes of the Midwest and Pacific Northwest, there is a recurring myth of Thunderbirds fighting against aggressive giant serpents or serpentine monsters from the ocean or within the earth or in sea. Although in the latter, it's often not necessarily sea serpents or reptiles, but whales.
• Norse Mythology has a rivalry between Nidhoggr, a dragon that burrows through the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil, and a giant eagle that nests in its highest branches.

Tabletop Games

• Pathfinder: The birdlike celestials known as garudas wage an ancient vendetta against the snakelike nagas, whose leader they believe once imprisoned the mother of their race.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed: The Assassins/Hidden Ones, represented by the eagle, fight against the Templars, whose predecessor organization, the Order of the Ancients, was referred to and represented collectively as a snake.
• Halo: Within the games, when the capture the flag mode is played, the blue team will have an image of a bird of prey on their flag, while the red team has an image of a snake on theirs. This tradition began with the original Halo: Combat Evolved and continued until Halo 4.
• Monster Sanctuary's backstory states that the world was created by various celestial animal spirits, that came into conflict with one another regarding what role mortal life should play in their world — Celestial Dragon sided with the spirits who wanted mortals to worship and serve them, while Celestial Raven sided with the spirits who believed mortals deserved free will and the right to choose how to live.
• Pokémon Gold and Silver: Zig-zagged with Ho-Oh and Lugia. While they're not opponents in any canonical sense, they are the mascots of the titular games, and their aesthetics definitely fit the trope; Ho-Oh is brightly colored, associated with the sky and rainbows, and is much more overtly feathered (i.e. bird-like). Lugia is mostly white, associated with the ocean and, while possessing wings, its body is much more streamlined (like a serpent or whale).

Western Animation

• Blast-Off Buzzard (a segment of 1977's CB Bears) has the title bird in pursuit of Crazy Legs Snake.
• Maya and the Three: In the first episode, an eagle catches a snake and perches with it in the opening sequence. This is an obvious reference to the Legend of Tenochtitlan and the Mexican coat of arms, (see above under Mythology & Religion) but it's actually also foreshadowing the very end of the series. In the climatic final battle, Lord Mictlan takes the form of a giant two-headed serpent, and Maya, Eagle Warrior and Great Eagle of the prophecy, clashes with him.

Real Life

• Many types of birds, ranging from eagles to roadrunners, prey on snakes in real life. The one most linked to this trope, however, is probably the secretary bird, whose scientific name is Sagittarius serpentarius or "archer/hunter of snakes". The bird's reputation as a snake-eater (by stomping them to death with its long legs) has earned it a revered status in some traditional African cultures, such that some countries like South Africa have included it on their national emblem.

---