The following additional references to the bird as a symbol of the wind are appropriate at this point.
Not only is the day Ehecatl represented in the Mexican codices by a bird’s head, but we see a bird perched upon a tree at each of the cardinal points on plate 44 of the Fejervary Codex. Birds are also perched on three of the four trees representing the cardinal points on plate 65 of the Vatican Codex.
In speaking of the myths of the Muyscas, Dr Brinton[220-1] says:
In the cosmogonical myths of the Muyscas, this [alluding to a certain name] was the home or source of light, and was a name applied to the demiurgic force. In that mysterious dwelling, so their account ran, light was shut up and the world lay in primeval gloom. At a certain time the light manifested itself, and the dawn of the first morning appeared, the light being carried to the four quarters of the earth by great black birds, who blew the air and winds from their beaks.
The Javanese also assigned a bird to each of the cardinal points, doubtless with substantially the same mythological concept.
Commenting on a passage of the Popol Vuh, in which the name Voc is mentioned, the same author[220-2] says:
The name Voc is that of a species of bird (Cakchiquel Vaku). Coto describes it as having green plumage, and a very large and curved bill, apparently a kind of parrot. Elsewhere in the myth (page 70) it is said to be the messenger of Hurakan, resting neither in the heaven nor in the underworld, but in a moment flying to the sky, to Hurakan, who dwells there.
This is unquestionably the wind symbolized as a bird. The name for wind in Malay is bayu, and Vayu is a Wind god in Hindu mythology. Garud, the Bird deity of the Hindu Pantheon, who plays such an important rôle in the Mahabharata, and is so frequently termed therein “the foremost ranger of the skies,” is apparently the Storm god, the equivalent of the Maya Hurukan.
We may remark incidentally that a curious coincidence is found in the fact that there appears to be a relation between the wind and monkeys in the mythology both of the Hindu and of the natives of Central America, or at least of Mexico. Hanuman, the Monkey god, who plays such an important part in the Ramayana, was the son of Pavana, the chief Wind deity. According to Brasseur, in his introductory essay to the Popol Vuh, it is stated in the Codex Chimalpopoca that the men were, on a day Ehecatl, changed by the wind into monkeys. On what peculiar mythological conception this idea is based I am unable to state.