RESPECT TOWARD THE OMEN BIRD
The omen bird is never killed, for to kill it would draw down unmitigated misfortune. On the contrary, it is often captured and is carefully fed and petted, especially when an inmate of the house is about to undertake a journey. The prospective traveler takes a little camote or banana and, placing it in the cage, addresses the captive bird and asks it to sing to its companions of the woods that they too in turn may sing to him the song of success and safe return.
And again, on the safe return of the traveler, if there is a captive omen bird in his household, it is a common practice to feed it and give it drink, addressing it tenderly as if it had been the cause of the success of the trip.
When the undertaking is one of importance, such as the selection of a site for a new clearing, or one fraught with possible danger, such as a trip into a dangerous locality, the free wild bird of the woods and not the captive bird is solemnly invoked.18 It is requested to sing out its warning or its auspicious song in clear unmistakable tones. Before a war expedition an offering of rice is set out on a log near the house as a further inducement to it to be propitious.
18Táu-ag-táu-ag to li-mó-kon.
INTERPRETATION OF THE OMEN BIRD'S CALL
It frequently requires an expert to interpret exactly the meaning of the various positions from which the bird has sung and in certain cases even several experts can not arrive at a consensus of opinion. Hence the following interpretation is intended as a mere general outline from which an idea may be gained of the intricacies and sometimes apparent contradictions involved in Manóbo ornithoscopy.
The observations may be divided into three kinds, good, bad, and indifferent, and these three kinds into infinite combinations, for the interpretation of the first original observation may be modified and remodified by subsequent cries proceeding from other directions. Thus what was originally a good omen, may become, in conjunction with subsequent ones, most fatal.