HOOPOE
[Heb., du·khi·phathʹ].
The identification of this bird with the “lapwing,” as in the Authorized Version (Lev. 11:19; Deut. 14:18), is no longer followed by modern translations. The translators of the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate understood it to be the “hoopoe” (eʹpops, LXX; upupa, Vg), and the Syrian and Arabic names for the hoopoe (Syr., qaqupha; Arab., hudhudu) also confirm this identification.
Some believe the Hebrew name for the hoopoe (du·khi·phathʹ) is intended to represent the peculiar, somewhat dovelike cry of the bird, as is clearly the case with its name in the other languages mentioned. Others would derive the name from the Hebrew word meaning “to pound, beat,” noting the hoopoe’s practice of drumming its beak on the ground.
About the size of a slender pigeon, the hoopoe is a somewhat cinnamon-colored bird, distinctively marked with alternate broad bars of white and black along its wings and back. Its most conspicuous feature is a crest of plumes, each feather ending in a white border tipped with black, the crest running from the base of the long, slender curved bill all the way to the back of the bird’s head. When expanded, the crest forms a handsome semicircular crown, and the bird raises and lowers it like a fan. But though colorfully and conspicuously dressed, the hoopoe is notably unclean in home and habits. Its diet of insects is obtained by probing with its sharp bill not only in the ground but also in dunghills and other filth. The nest, consisting of a hole in some bank, hollow tree, or wall, gives off a disagreeable odor produced by secretions of the bird’s oil glands, and also becomes foul-smelling due to the bird’s failure to clean the nest of excrement. Thus, while not a bird of prey nor an eater of carrion, the hoopoe was included among the birds listed as unclean for food in the Mosaic law.—Lev. 11:13, 19; Deut. 14:12, 18.
The hoopoe also has an unsavory connection with superstition and magical practices. Its head was anciently used in witches’ charms and representations thereof were often carved on the top of diviners’ rods. By the Arabs the bird was considered as endowed with the ability to locate underground water, evidently due to its manner of stalking about and bending its head downward while opening and closing its crest, actually done in search of food.
Found throughout southern Asia and Africa and parts of Europe, the hoopoe migrates to Palestine about the first of March and remains until the approach of winter, when it heads southward to Egypt and other parts of northern Africa.
[Picture on page 786]
Hoopoe, a colorful bird with unclean habits