Stunning gift books on myths, poems and amazing facts on birds Looking at birds and their place in world culture, this book is illustrated with numerous masterpieces of classic art, mainly from the collection of The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg as well as 20th-century Russian works. Mysterious and inconceivable, associated with gods of the sun and fire, with good and evil, sometimes fragile and helpless, sometimes a symbol offreedom, birds feature in myths and ancient legends, they play a role in religious beliefs and popular folklore, in literature and art.