ABSTRACT
The works of Spenser contain nearly 200 references to birds. He mentions between 40 and 50 different species, including many garden and woodland birds, a range of predators and game birds, and a few exotic and mythological birds (see list below). A poet writing in the late sixteenth century had access to a substantial tradition of comment on and interpretation of the characteristics of numerous species. This tradition, derived from classical and medieval encyclopedias and bestiaries, manifested itself in various other forms, especially the fable and beast epic, popular and ecclesiastical art, the emblem book, and the proverb. Such forms have a common approach, in that they are more concerned with moral comment than with precise observation, and the information they embody ranges from the accurate to the absurd. Though the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries constitute a period in which a more scientific ornithology developed, the references to birds by the poets of the period mainly reflect traditional associations.
