Siyiniao

by Cole Herrold

Recently a documentary was made by Crash Course Cryptozoology on the Lone Pine Mountain Devils. The Lone Pine Mountain Devils are believed to be small four-winged flying mammals similar in appearance to bats or carnivorous squirrels. These creatures have popped up a few times in some resources as a potential cryptid. It was through the documentary, however, that it came to light that the creatures most certainly like the Ozark Howler and Oklahoma Octopus are nothing but online urban legends. While this flying four-winged mammal is most certainly a hoax, one of the interesting features of the documentary was the hypothesis that what was seen was a Microraptor, a prehistoric dinosaur that did have feathers on its legs, giving it an appearance like it had four wings. One of the reasons this hypothesis was implausible, however, was the location of where the fossils had been discovered, namely China. Which, even without a connection to the Lone Pine Devils, could still be around.

In the Changbai Mountain Region, there are rumors and reports of a bizarre bird with four wings. This bizarre bird is known as the Siyiniao, which translates literally to 'four-winged bird,' is described as being covered in a pale-yellow plumage with a round head, a slender tail, and obviously four wings, the top or front pair being much larger than its lower pair. In 1908 Liu Jianfeng wrote in his book Changbai Shan Jianggang Zhilue, where we get this initial description from also goes into detail about the creatures alleged vocalizations claiming that they are similar to an Old-World Oriole's. Liu Jianfeng collected the tales of the Siyiniao from locals who were extremely familiar with this creature and its habits.

The first detailed report that has officially occurred on July 15, 1996, or 1997. It was on this day that two schoolteachers, Zhen Yanyan and Fan Qiaoling, were out traveling near the western slopes of the Changbai mountains. While looking out the window of the bus they were in, they noticed a bizarre bird flying over the ground. This bizarre bird they would describe very much mirroring the description that appeared in Jianfeng's book with one exception. The bird was pale yellow as described by the locals and was a tad larger than a magpie with a pointed beak and the obvious four wings, which similarly were described as being larger on the front set and smaller on the rear. However, as opposed to a slender tail, they noted a slew of tail feathers in the shape of an inverted trapezoid. The bird, as they watched, proceeded to fly over the ground and managed to make its way into the surrounding woodland. Disappearing from the sight of the observers.

Very rarely in Cryptid encounters do we have a witness who encounters a cryptid multiple times; however, Du Wenlian, a tour guide of the Changbai mountains, would encounter this avian anomaly twice in the year 2009. She first encountered the bizarre bird in late July of 2009; while out, she noticed a light-yellow bird beating its wings slightly near the road that she was traveling along close to Yuehualin. Only a month after her initial sighting, Du would encounter a smaller specimen in August of 2009. This sighting which occurred almost two miles from her initial one, gave her more insight into this creature's locomotion; even though the creature was much smaller than her first, she noticed that the way the bird would propel itself through the air was not unlike that of a butterfly in motion as the wings both on the front and back would lift up together and drop to aid in propulsion.

Interestingly while those are the only English translated mass reiterated accounts of the Siyiniao there is a similar creature whose appearance is almost identical. This creature known as the Xiao is a four-winged bird which had a doglike tail and as if the appearance couldn’t get any more bizarre a single eye. The creature much like the Siyiniao is compared to a magpie in vocalization and in a lesser extent appearance. Allegedly the creature when eaten has some gastronomical healing ability as eating its flesh can cure both abdominal pain and diarrhea. Now there is a very good chance that what the Xiao is, is a regional variation of the Siyiniao in fact aside from the four wings the dog like tail could be a reference to the inverted trapezoid style tail that some reports of the Siyiniao is said to have and in fact some ancient Chinese art do seem to solidify this appearance.

While specific sightings of this bird are slim and practically nonexistent in American media, especially the most interesting aspect of this creature is not the sightings since most are as mundane as a natural sighting of normal fauna, but it's the bizarre appearance that does not match to anything we currently know exists today. This creature, much like the flashlight frog or Mongolian death worm, is a cryptid that if you were to encounter it in the wild, you probably would not recognize it as a new species even with its unique second wing structure, which to the untrained eye could be chalked up to a kind of plumage display as seen with the bird of paradise and their ilk. Yet, for those biologists and researchers who know that a four-winged bird is an incredible find, it is something that could change science forever if found.

While the bizarre appearance is if accurate revolutionary, it does add to the mystery, for no known species matches the appearance of the Siyiniao. This, as with all cryptid sightings, raises the question of what it could be. Starting off skeptically, the identity of the Siyiniao might be that of the Standard-Winged Nightjar. The Standard Winged Nightjar is a nocturnal species of bird found in Africa. This bird during breeding season is known to generate a bizarre wing attachment that features a broad central flight feather that can be found on each wing. These attachments can reach a foot in length, and the bizarre appearance of this feature, as hypothesized in the book Mystery Creatures of China, might potentially be misinterpreted as an additional set of wings. The problem with this hypothesis, however, is that the Standard Winged Nightjar is found primarily in the area from Senegal to Ethiopia in Africa, which is a far gap from the reported sightings of the Siyiniao in China. A step up from the Standard Winged Nightjar hypothesis is the idea that potentially what is seen in a Chinese nightjar as yet unidentified that also has these mating season features. This would still be a cryptid and something to consider; however, if we are to take sightings of this animal at face value, the wings are clearly segmented and attached to the body and not some additional feature protruding from already established features.

The next most plausible idea is that this is a bird that somehow, through evolution, managed to evolve two sets of wings. This is accurate is an extremely interesting possibility, for it's something that we have not seen in nature. Wings are essentially super-modified hands and arms adapted from previous ancestors' features. If a bird developed two sets of wings, that would imply that it would have two sets of arm bones and phalanges. Now there is also the possibility that what is being seen is not a true wing as I've described but a feathered structure that aids in flight or gliding, so this secondary structure would then be not a true wing. However, going off of the reports, primarily those of Du Wenlian in 2009, where she described the wings as functioning like those of a butterfly, it would seem that this is probably not the case, and instead, we are seeing truly functional wings.

The next possibility which I mentioned earlier is that what this creature is, is that it is a relict that somehow managed to survive mass extinction. The Microraptor did have four wings, the second pair being connected to the animal's feet that were covered in plumage that does seem to indicate some flight capacity. The creature also had a long slender feathery tail which is similar to what locals told Liu Jianfeng that the Siyiniao's tail is supposed to look like. The Microraptor lived in the early Cretaceous period, and interestingly enough, fossils have been found near the Changbai Mountains in the province of Liaoning. Now while this seems to be a dead ringer for what the Siyiniao could be, there are some features that could point to it being something else entirely. The obvious problem is that the Microraptor has been believed to be extinct for millions of years, and while this creature is more plausible to of survived the mass extinction due to its small size, we still have no official find in the fossil record confirming its existence past the Cretaceous period. The next major issue is that when comparing the 2009 sightings with its appearance, there are some features that seem to point to another creature entirely. The bird seen in the 1990s was described as having a tail like an inverted trapezoid. This inverted trapezoid is more finch or bird of prey like which is entirely different from the long slender tail, which is more like a feathered reptile as seen in the Microraptor fossils. Another feature, even though it's a minor difference as far as we can tell in the fossil record, is the report of the beak in the 90s and microraptor's fossil. Many researchers believe that many dinosaurs did have a kind of beak and many that we have discovered do, but as far as we can tell, Microraptor did not, even though most paleontology-oriented artwork does depict them as having a beak similar to a robin or another finch-like bird.

The wings of the Microraptor also, as stated and their functionality as compared to the Siyiniao is another possible difference that could hint at something else. Microraptor's wings are connected to both hands and arms, legs, and feet. The Siyiniao is not ever specified as to whether the bird has an additional set of legs or if it is simply the two sets of wings. If it is the former and not the latter, there is the chance that what we are truly talking about is a six-limbed creature and not a four-limbed creature with both pairs being specialized for flight. From the research, I've found this element is ambiguous and something we do need to keep in mind for this additional pair of limbs can totally put a monkey's wrench into the works of attempting to figure out what this creature could be. Assuming it is four wings only and a feature akin to Microraptor, the locomotion in flight is something that does need to be debated on for since all we have to go on with microraptor's behavior is a pile of bones, so how it truly moved is almost impossible to verify we can come close for sure when comparing the movements of known species but to be 100% sure this is how it moved is a slim chance. In fact, there are some researchers who don't believe the Microraptor could fly like a bird but could only glide, and if that's the case, then it would be very different from the Siyiniao, which seems to be very much adapted to the ability to fly even though the only true description we have to its propulsion is that it flew like a butterfly which is very stereotypic when one thinks of a four-winged flying creature.

While the Microraptor hypothesis has its flaws, there is the possibility that it might not be too far off. There is the possibility a small relict population did survive and proceeded to evolve into an even more bird-like creature and managed to keep the four-winged feature still and adapted it to be more suited for flying than its previous ancestors. The geographic area for such an evolution is perfect and much more plausible than a lot of other cryptid sightings of similar creatures or other saurians in areas where fossils were not found of the creature they are said to represent.  Sure, this is only conjectured as with most cases when attempting to rationalize the unexplained, but it is not so farfetched. Whales, for example, still have pelvic bones. They are a vestigial structure that they no longer need, but due to issues with losing the feature, they continue to have it as a reminder of a time when their ancestors walked on land. We could be seeing something similar here except that this feature is more of a help evolutionarily than a hindrance leading to a more complex feature.

The Siyiniao is a bizarre creature from a continent that certainly holds more than a mystery or two. We must remember the Giant Panda, which was well known by locals for time and millennia, was not accepted by western science until that later portion of the 1800s, and even then, a live specimen wasn't seen until the early 1900s. So, a small bird or relict saurian would have an even better chance of remaining elusive compared to, let's say, an 8ft tall hairy ape and an even longer chance of undiscovery. This is a cryptid that chances are will be only discovered by a biologist or an ornithologist who, on a chance, encountered it. Cryptozoologists tend to focus on the monsters and the giant beasts reaching 8ft -12ft tall tromping through the woodlands or 20-60ft long swimming in the lakes and seas. While there is merit to that research for sure, cryptids like the Siyiniao tend to be passed by without a thought, for even though they could change our understanding of biology, they are not something so astronomically different that it would shake the very foundation. This, unfortunately, exacerbates the status of this creature, even more, making it another in a long line of non-exotic cryptids that tend to go unnoticed even though they are by far the more plausible of the group. But who knows, maybe some future Audubon, while in the area, might finally capture a specimen either intentionally or accidentally and in doing so might show to the world how important and incredible this creature truly is.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Bird or Saurian most likely Microraptor

Location: Changbai Mountains, Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning Provinces, China

Sighted: Pre-1908, 1997/1998, 2009

Works Cited

Mystery Creatures of China: The Complete Cryptozoological Guide by David C. Xu

A Chinese Bestiary: Strange Creatures from the Guideways Through Mountains and Seas By Richard E. Strassberg

“Xiao” A Book of Creatures. April 22, 2019. https://abookofcreatures.com/2019/04/22/xiao/. Accessed May 8, 2021.