The truth about Vietnam's strange 'tied her up' bird

Not only does it have a unique name, the bird that tied her up is also a bird with many strange characteristics of Vietnam. In Vietnam, birds that tie her up on a tie are found in most places from the mountains to the plains.

The bird that tied her up has the scientific name Cuculus micropterus.

This is a medium-sized cuckoo bird , the male and female look quite similar.

In the world, tied-up birds are distributed in Asia, from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka to Indonesia in the south and China.

Birds that tie her up often live in the forest, at altitudes above 3,600m. 

They have a white upper half of their body while the lower half has many black and white stripes.

Young birds in the nest have orange-red mouths and yellow edges.

This exotic bird prefers to live in evergreen and evergreen forests, however it also lives in gardens and bushes.

Due to hearing the cries of birds, many Vietnamese people hear many different sentences: or "five buffaloes and six pillars", "overcoming difficulties", "Indian cuckoo", "Northern Quang Bac Muc", "Ha Giang poisoned water", "four girls and ninety", "nine girls and forty", "five buffaloes and six stakes", "tie the girl to a pole", "the king and mandarin tied the pole", "chasing the West to fight Japan".

There are two widely recognized subspecies. Subspecies Cuculus micropterus sp. micropterus is distributed on the Asian continent, while the subspecies Cuculus micropterus sp. concretus S. Müller, 1845 is smaller, has darker fur and is distributed in the Malay Peninsula, Java, Sumatra and Borneo. Amur birds have larger bodies and Swinhoe calls this group (from North China upwards) Cuculus michieanus while Walter Norman Koelz describes the fatidicus form of northeastern India.

The story goes that the bird caught her tied up

Once upon a time, there was a poor farmer who had to divide five acres of land belonging to a rich man in the village. The rich man is the richest man in the whole country: land, cattle and buffaloes are countless. Seeing that he had an honest and hard-working personality and always paid a fair amount of rice, the rich man gave him the opportunity to raise buffaloes. He was determined to do business, working in the fields and raising buffaloes, and soon the pair of buffaloes grew into five children.

One day, the rich man suddenly. fell dead, all his land assets, cattle and cattle became the property of his only daughter. However, many of the things the rich man entrusted to his tenants were already written in writing, but before he could complete them, he suddenly died.

The daughter is very similar to the rich man, like father, like daughter, and she is a person with little tricks, never willing to lose even a small thing to outsiders. After mourning her father, she began to take control of the assets left by her father.

She arrived at the poor farmer's house just when the buffalo herder had not yet returned. She only knew that he raised buffaloes, but she didn't know exactly how many. She didn't see the rich man write them down in the books, but when she asked the people who ate and lived in the house, they vaguely remembered that it was five or six animals.

In those days, the buffaloes were raised without cages. They just built a row of posts in the corner of the yard. At night, each animal was tied to a post. When she arrived, she counted six pillars and muttered: 'Six pillars are six buffaloes'.

When Mr. Luc Dien returned from beating the buffalo, she counted up and down and there were only five animals. 'Weird! Could it be that when he heard the news of his father's death, he didn't require paperwork to raise buffaloes for a long time, so this guy stole one?'. Thinking so, she said loudly: 'Hey you! Where's the other one?' . Anh Luc Dien was surprised : 'Which one are you talking about? I raised only five children in total. She smiled slyly: 'Hey, don't make fun of me, why do five buffaloes have six columns? Don't tell me you lost one in the forest.'

He explained that one column was almost broken so he had to build another one but was too busy to pull the other one away. The girl who refused to listen was determined : 'Don't talk much anymore, if you don't find a buffalo, it will be difficult to live with me. Five buffaloes, why six columns?'.

Seeing her muttering repeatedly, 'five buffaloes, six pillars' , he got angry and snapped: 'Only by forcing you to tie her to a pillar will the disaster become six!' . She was also not a good person, she jumped up and scolded him in all kinds of words and in all kinds of ways. He thought, for a long time I have been honest with the rich man, but this girl sees me as a cunning person. He sadly left for the forest; She followed closely behind him. She said 'five buffaloes, six poles' and he replied 'force her to tie her up'. The two went deep into the forest, because they kept talking to each other, they starved and died.

They both turned into birds and lived together in the same forest. Both forage from dusk to dawn, one over this mountain, one over that mountain. The conversation still hasn't stopped, one animal calls out 'five buffaloes, six poles' , the other replies 'force you to tie the pole'.