Animal Life and Landscapes

Faelivrin

Well-Known Member
There was a thread called “Beasts” before that mentioned animal life, but it’s under Season 1 and became entirely about Ungoliantë, so I started a new thread. In a way this is in reply to the first few posts of that thread which did discuss wildlife and Huan.


I feel that the wildlife, landscapes, and plants of Beleriand should resemble real-world, prehistoric western Europe. I discussed at length how I feel about the geographic and time-period correspondence here: https://forums.signumuniversity.org/index.php?threads/geographical-parallels.742/#post-12953

I can summarise by saying that, I feel, Beleriand and the Northlands should have a feel like western Europe during the very end of the Ice Age (14,500 to 11,500 years ago in the real world), with a cold and dry steppe climate in the Northlands, with Beleriand itself resembling a milder period with forest, woodlands, and mosaics of woodland and meadows and wooded steppe. I don't think there needs to be any emphasis or focus on wildlife, in fact outside of hunting scenes it can be ignored. But I do feel strongly there should be nothing non-European and nothing from any pre-human time period.

In Europe very recently (until massive deforestation and overhunting/extermination) there were wisent/bison, forest horse/forest tarpans, woodland reindeer, brown bears, northern lynx, elk/moose, wild boar, red deer, roe deer, grey wolves, badgers, and beavers all over the landscape, plus ibex and chamois in the hills and mountains, and seals and great auks all along the west coast. I also imagine that in the First Age there were some specific animals from the very late Ice Age: woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, steppe bison, wild horses/steppe tarpans, giant deer/"Irish elk", tundra reindeer, cave lions, cave hyenas, and wolverines – especially in the northlands (Hithlum, Ard-Galen, Lothlann) and northern East Beleriand -- plus polar bears and walrus on the Lammoth coast. Maybe wild oxen/aurochs and/or cave bears in southern Beleriand. East Beleriand, Lothlann, and Ard-Galen would be the "megafauna" hunting destination spots (although most of those animals aren't really that big, except mammoths* and rhinos*).

I would not like to see anything from any pre-human time period in Beleriand: no dinosaurs, entelodonts, Andrewsarchus, etc. Nothing that would be at all out of place in west Europe at a time when modern humans were living there. I accept that pterosaurs survived somewhere so Sauron could turn them into Fell Beasts, but I don’t want to see those in Beleriand. I think Dragons were based on regular snakes and lizards, to judge from how Tolkien illustrated Smaug and Glaurung as long and serpentine with dragging bellies. I do not see werewolves or wargs as being mutated from anything other than ordinary grey wolves, Canis lupus. Not whatever weird imaginary hyena thing Peter Jackson used, ugh.

*respectively, the size of a modern Asian elephant, and smaller than modern African rhinos




I like Irish wolfhound for Huan, though he does need to be larger than real ones so Luthien can ride him like a horse. So, pony-sized. Like so:
beren-and-luthien-wip-2.jpg
 
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I think that is a pretty good summary!

The only ordinary animals we would see on and off would be cattle, horses, dogs, songbirds, common insects. Maybe large deer in hunting scenes.. And of course a few whales and other sea animals off the coast.

The cattle and the horses men use could well resemble aurochs and tarpan
 
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Another list of animals mentioned in the text which i had mentioned before, though not all of these are beleriandic fauna:

Megafauna:
-The Great Eagles : i suppose they don't look like prehistoric birds but are more or less overlarge golden eagles/ european stone eagles like those native to the alps?
-Great spiders : we have already had extensive discussions about ungolianth, with lots of pics of disgusting spider species..
- big moths
- huge fishes: the dunkleosteus?
- large crickets
-great wolves: as you mentioned before. The war wolves, wargs and werewolves are possibly just mutated grey wolves.
-Giant Mice: vermin of angband. I don't have any closer ideas about these yet
-Great Swans: do we have these in beleriand? I know we have them in valinor.. Could be cygnus falconeri.
-Great Cats: not described in detail, but i guess we are talking about predators here. I suggest cave lions?or homotherium?
-Great Serpents: not dragons! Just vermin of angband... Don't have any closer idea about them, though they also might be maiar of some sort.
-great Hound: as you suggested, enlarged irish wolf hounds
-gigantic black bears: do we have these in beleriand? I know we have tjem in the misty mountains and rhovanion. Maybe cave bears?or ursus maritimus tyrannis?
-great Boar: again, are these native to beleriand?
-large snails: we have them in rhovanion but not eriador. Don't know if we should use these
-great whales: certainly in the great sea before valinor and beleriand. I suggest great white whales?albino blue whales?
- Sea-serpents: are mentioned briefly, lingwiloki. Would we make these creatures of melkor or just animals?
-Great glow-worms : we have them at valinor, maybe beleriand too?
-great kine: orome's kine, i suggest great albino aurochs, we should have them in rhun/ palisor abd valinor. Or maybe steppe bisons?
-great sea-Turtles: don't know if we use them. We could have some ar mumenor i guess, kind of fastitikalons cameo
-overlarge bumblebees : use or use not. I guess we could have them in valinor?
- overlarge bees: known in rhovanion. Don't know if we use them for beleriand
- overlarge hornets: maybe ignore? Or use as nuisance in the wild, like neekerbreekers
-great Sealions: in valinor and the falas?
-great Narwhals : valinor & belegaer, perhaps helcaraxe?
-oversized badgers: maybe ignore?

Perhaps cave hyaenas and strsight tusked elephants on the great wandering?

Other mentioned in the text:
- deer: we know we have harts . Maybe cervalces too or cervantus?
- seals: maybe elephant seals?
-bats
- bees
-boar
- butterflies
-cockerel: wild fowl?
- crows
- doves
- eels
-elven horses: i suppose larger arabs?
- emelin: small yellow birds? Yellowhammers?
- filigod: other small birds?
- foxes
- frogs: paläobatrachus?
- geese
-goats
- gulls
- hart: alces cornutum? Irish giant elk?
- hens: i suggest wild fowl?
- kingfisher
- larks
- lavand: some unspecified quadrupedes?
-lice: i suggest orcs have these..
- lions: cave lions i suggest
-moles
- nightingales
- pheasants
- rats
- ravens
- sable
- sheep
- swallows
-white fairy cattle: brought from valinor?
- wild dogs: at hithlum. Where do these come from?
- woodpeckers
- worms: again no dragons but vermin. I suppose orcs have these too..
- camels : elves oddly have words for these... We could have them at valinor i guess, or the easterlings bring these ?
 
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Haerangil I wasn't aware of most of those giant animals at all (giant boars, giant bears, giant mice, giant insects, giant sea lions, giant badgers, etc.) What books are they in?

I'm afraid I don't share your enthusiasm for adding pre-human and pre-dinosaur animals such as Palaeobatrachus or Dunkelosteus.

-The Great Eagles : What is a stone eagle? Did your device autocorrect for steppe eagle?
-Great Swans: Valinor is full of animals and plants that don't exist in Middle-earth. I'm not aware of Valinorean swans being specifically gigantic, though I wouldn't object to giant swans in Valinor. Or any fantastical (beautiful) or prehistoric creatures. But not in Beleriand. Sadly, the real-world giant swans were pre-human.
-Great Cats: Weren't they only in the Lost Tales? I do like cave lions for Beleriand. Melkor could have corrupted lions as well as wolves and boars, but I wouldn't want to add in a cat equivalent of werewolves. I'm not sure about sabretooths -- they aren't pre-human, but they went extinct 30,000 years ago.
-Great Serpents: Could include Umaiar. (Could include Sauron when he felt like it). Were the snake animals different from normal snakes, besides being corrupted into evil? Perhaps no more different from adders than wargs are from wolves. So, bigger and sinister looking, more intelligent and definitely malevolent. Maybe with nastier venom. Or perhaps there were horrible things bred from snakes that were among the biological ancestors of Glaurung's body...
-large snails: I think those in The Hobbit can be normal snails. Escargot snails have shells 5-6 cm wide.
-great whales: Normal whales are huge enough, I think.
- Sea-serpents: I see them in the Etymologies now, but I don't think they really make sense. After Osse went back to Manwe's side and was redeemed, Melkor didn't have any servants in the waters. (Until Sauron turned some octopus into the Watcher in the Water.)
-great kine: I thought "Wild kine" specifically means aurochs. Tolkien seems to have thought they were always confined to a tiny corner of East Europe (the last ones were shot in Poland), and doesn't appear to have been aware wisents existed. Both those and steppe bison could live in Beleriand.
-great sea-Turtles: The poem "Fastitocalon" is a deliberate misinterpretation of regular sea turtles, based on the ancient Greek misinterpretation that was named aspidokhelon.

Perhaps cave hyaenas and strsight tusked elephants on the great wandering?
There would be huge hyenas from Kuivienen to Beleriand if the First Age corresponded to the Ice Age. The "straight-tusked" elephant"* was enormous, I think it lived only in the southern half of Europe, and it went extinct 50,000 years ago, slightly before Homo sapiens showed up in Europe. I tend to identify it with the oliphaunts, which are likewise huger than today's elephants... John Howe painted the oliphaunt as one. But I suppose that they lived only in Harad, and maybe during the First Age (after the Sunrise) in the Gondor area and Andrast. It probably couldn't have survived anywhere north of southern Europe.

* actually had curved tusks, I don't know why it's called that.


Other mentioned in the text:
- deer: we know we have harts . Maybe cervalces too or cervantus?
: The European Cervalces/Libralces was pre-human. I can't find any info about a Cervantus genus.
- seals: maybe elephant seals? : Elephant seals live in Antarctica and the Pacific coast of North America. Besides the current north European seals, the only addition that is plausible to me is walrus.
-elven horses: Noldor must have something beautiful and graceful. Like you said, Middle-earth horses are probably tarpan-like and kinda smallish, at least in the First Age and early Second Age. I'm not clear on how Rohan and Eriador and Gondor got horses of any other kind that were not mearas ... maybe mearas are descended fro Nolorin horses or even from horses given to the Eldar by Orome, and the other modern-looking riding horses are descended from Numenorean horses, crossed with Middle-earth horses?
- emelin: small yellow birds? Yellowhammers? : Yes I think it's the yellowhammer.
- hart: alces cornutum? Irish giant elk?: I think hart means a female red deer. I would expect giant deer/Irish elk, as well as red deer, roe deer, and elk/moose. I can't find any information about an Alces cornutum, but I would expect modern elk/moose.
-white fairy cattle: brought from valinor?: Noldorin cattle should totally be white with red ears!
- camels : elves oddly have words for these... : Well Valinor is supposed to have every animal except "monsters of horn and ivory" (which apparently means elephants and rhinos and deer and the entirety of Bovidae... but how do the Noldor have cattle then? Tolkien why are cows "monsters"??) ... But if you are looking at the language of Kuivienen, note that the first Elves supposedly also had names for the Sun and Moon and books ... somehow. :confused: No, I don't think the languages are a good indicator of what the early Quendi had and hadn't seen... In any case, I think Bactrian camels could have lived at Kuivienen, and Dromedaries in Hildorien and Harad, but not in the European lands of the LotR map, nor Beleriand.

I have no idea what filigod and lavand are.

hens and cockerels: Were these only in the LotR, or also in the First Age somewhere?
Tolkien made a conundrum with chickens, tobacco, and potatoes in the Lord of the Rings. What are an Indian bird and two American plants doing in pre-Bronze Age Europe? I can accept that the Numenoreans brought some kind of (not-carcinogenic?) Eressean pipe-weed to Middle-earth, but why are there potatoes? In my mind I gloss over potatoes and Lobelia's umbrella as anachronisms and pretend they aren't in the book. (I pretend JRRT wrote "turnips".) Or potatoes are a vegetable from Eressea that the Numenoreans brought, but different from the American white potato.

Chickens... well there may have been a wild chicken of some kind in southeast Europe in the Ice Age, so we could claim that the Dunedain of Gondor domesticated those (Gallus meschtscheriensis). Or brought a chicken-like bird from Numenor. Or brought them from India, because they supposedly sailed all over the flat world before the Downfall.
 
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I like your suggestions about the Elven Horses and Elven Cattle! Those Animals surely come from Aman, just like the Great Dogs of the Valar and the Great Eagles...

I do not necessarily want to push pre-humantime animals or megafauna... i just wanted to underline the tendency of greater-than-common animals and animals that have an archaic air about them. The Winged Fell Beasts are the only truly archaic saur-like beast i can think of that is truly attestable vie the legendarium - and they are only very loosely based on prehistoric examples. I would treat the dunkelosteus or palaeobatrachus just like that: ugly big fish and ugly big frog.

What is a stone eagle? Did your device autocorrect for steppe eagle?

I believe a wrong translation... in germany the Golden Eagle is called a "Steinadler", literally "Stone Eagle". The Genus native to the Alps...


-Great Swans: Valinor is full of animals and plants that don't exist in Middle-earth.

Well, these swans drew the ships of the Teleri... LT of course and a fairytale Element, but I think we can deduce these swans were at last large.

Great swans of Gorbelgod are mentioned for the sevcind Age in the Tale of Tal Elmar. Great doesn't of course mean "Giant". I guess these were large swans, but not giant like the prehistorix Giant Swans - though i dig these!

-Great Cats: Weren't they only in the Lost Tales? I do like cave lions for Beleriand. Melkor could have corrupted lions as well as wolves and boars, but I wouldn't want to add in a cat equivalent of werewolves. I'm not sure about sabretooths -- they aren't pre-human, but they went extinct 30,000 years ago.

Lost Tales only , yes! We don't have to use sabretooths... I guess just larger Wildcats would do...

and of course the LT Cats are demonic.


-Great Serpents: Could include Umaiar. (Could include Sauron when he felt like it). Were the snake animals different from normal snakes, besides being corrupted into evil? Perhaps no more different from adders than wargs are from wolves. So, bigger and sinister looking, more intelligent and definitely malevolent. Maybe with nastier venom. Or perhaps there were horrible things bred from snakes that were among the biological ancestors of Glaurung's body...

Those beasts are mentioned for Morgoth#s throne room prior to dragons, so i guess... maybe a hint that something new is coming?


-large snails: I think those in The Hobbit can be normal snails. Escargot snails have shells 5-6 cm wide.

Cockerel, hen...could these be Peacockjs? Peacocks are mentioned as animals of Tol Eressea or Valinor..

That's big enough to qualify as large snails!

fen-fowl is mentioned once in connection with Beren... so probably wild Fowl of some sort is intended?

-great whales: Normal whales are huge enough, I think.

perhaps. These whales and fishes drew Tol Eressea, the Island-car... but many are strong!

- Sea-serpents: I see them in the Etymologies now, but I don't think they really make sense. After Osse went back to Manwe's side and was redeemed, Melkor didn't have any servants in the waters. (Until Sauron turned some octopus into the Watcher in the Water.)

Yes, a weird entry, the Lingwiloki. Perhaps these were just Animals? Not necessary Melkor-Monstres?


snakes of great size curled and
uncurled without rest about the pillars

in dark places snakes that slipped from
Utumna when Melko was bound moved noiselessly about

perhaps these are the same sort of beast? On the other Hand Snakes are seversal times mentioned as spy-animals... similar to crows...
I think we should have some kind of weird small, black Serpent... beasts whose appearance foireshadows that something evil lurks about or something bad might happen.

ps i wrote Cervantus? I probably meant the Cervavitus or Cervalces... it#s sometimes tricky with my iphone...
 
Until Sauron turned some octopus into the Watcher in the Water.
I thought that it was generally understood that the Watcher is related to, if not one of, the "nameless things that gnaw at the world" which pre-date Sauron and of which he has no knowledge. Has something else been decided for this "adaptation"?
 
I like your suggestions about the Elven Horses and Elven Cattle! Those Animals surely come from Aman, just like the Great Dogs of the Valar and the Great Eagles...
I'm pretty sure those were your suggestions and I was just agreeing with them. :)

I do not necessarily want to push pre-humantime animals or megafauna... i just wanted to underline the tendency of greater-than-common animals and animals that have an archaic air about them. The Winged Fell Beasts are the only truly archaic saur-like beast i can think of that is truly attestable vie the legendarium - and they are only very loosely based on prehistoric examples. I would treat the dunkelosteus or palaeobatrachus just like that: ugly big fish and ugly big frog.
It's totally reasonable to add animals that didn't exist in Europe. Beleriand had niphredil, elanor, and alfirin and we could add birds, fish, frogs, etc. that lived only in Beleriand and died at the end of the First Age, or lived in a broader area and died around the end of the Elder Days. But I would prefer them to be entirely fictional, either very beautiful creatures of that lost era, or ugly and corrupted spawn of Angband or Utumno. (But not with more beautiful songs than the nightingale.)

The specific genera you suggested are pre-human creatures. Dunkelosteus even predates the dinosaurs. I think they would be out of place. The late Ice Age was full of big impressive megafauna like steppe bison, whoolly mammoths, whoolly rhinos, cave lions, cave hyenas, giant deer/Irish elk, perhaps cave bears and/or sabretooths. And in general the mammal species that survived, except horses and wild asses, were larger than they grow to now, and with bigger horns or antlers. I expect whales, seals, and fish were bigger too... but they were the same genera or species that live in Europe or off the coast now. Maybe swans and amphibians and reptiles were bigger, too. (The prehistoric giant swans were so huge they were probably flightless, so we probably wouldn't want swans that big anyway.)



I don't think that any mere animals moved Eressea except in the very early versions of the Silm, like the Lost Tales or Quenta Noldorinwa. In the post-LotR Annals of Aman and Quenta Silmarillion only Ulmo and his servants, surely Maiar, moved the island.

Lingwiloke could be a mere animal... except the Etymologies all but states they are dragons. Somehow. o_O I mean if we want we could say that "sea-serpent" sightings are actually Ulmo's Maiar. Or Ulmo himself, since he rarely bothers with a humanoid fana. Why be humanoid in the ocean? Let's be 400-foot long whales instead!

I thought that it was generally understood that the Watcher is related to, if not one of, the "nameless things that gnaw at the world" which pre-date Sauron and of which he has no knowledge.
It could be, that's a good idea.

Haerangil: To my recollection Morgoth has at least corrupted some of these animals: wolves (into wargs), crows and owls (probably as spies that look normal), boars, and snakes. Much later Sauron also has corrupted swans which are black (but certainly not Australian black swans) and those could date back to Angband, if we want. There's room for everything from rats and flies up to bison or mammoths being turned to evil. And the evil animals don't necessarily look that different, so sometimes you have to judge by behavior, or guess. When the wargs attacked the Fellowship in Eregion, one of them said that the attack was not like an animal simply looking for food, suggesting that only by their behavior could they be told apart from normal wolves. On the other hand the evil swans look very different, so that can happen too. Depending if they are meant as ugly mockeries, or soldier-monsters, or spies.

Cockerel, hen...could these be Peacockjs? Peacocks are mentioned as animals of Tol Eressea or Valinor..

That's big enough to qualify as large snails!

fen-fowl is mentioned once in connection with Beren... so probably wild Fowl of some sort is intended?
I'm guessing fen-fowl means a moorhen or water rail.

Disappointingly for Beleriand and Gondor, peacocks are also Indian birds but they can apparently cry out at dawn (that video seems to have real roosters in the background). Pheasants also crow according to the internets, but are likewise not in Europe until Romans or Greeks introduced them. You tell me if either sounds enough like cock-a-doodle-doo.
 
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The mearas are probably the descendants of nahar, oromes horse... So they have some fairy blood. Elven horses shoul have too... The nildor went hunting with orome.

Elfin cattle and elfin roe are mentioned for doriath... But i like the suggested connection to welsh mythology.. So white stag and white cattle with red ears.
 
We have creatures that are twisted mongoth- animals:

Bats, boars, dogs, falcons, mice, cats, serpents, owls, worms...

I think these should have a twisted look anout them. These beadts wete mutated/ warped by magic torture

Then we have creatures of the fairy realm:
Butterflies, cattle, deer, doves, gulls, dragonflies, horses, glowworms, bees, swans, harts, roe, kingfishers, nightingales, narwhales, wolf hounds, üeacocks or pheasants, sealions, sheep, moths...

These creatures might come from aman or maybe even descend from maiar in animal shape. I think they should be greater, more beautiful, more enchanting, more phantastic in appearance than normal animals.

Then we have common beasts:
Bears, cattle, wild fowl, crows, doves, falllow deer, fen fowl, fishes, foxes, frogs, geese, goats, wild horses, hare, larks, lice, lions, moles, nightjars, rabbits, rats, rock doves, roe, sable, sea fowl, sheep, swallows, spiders, voles, weasles, moths, wild dogs, wolves, woodpeckers, worms

For some of these we could look for more archaic or prehistoric races... But they are still normal common animals of western/ northern europe.
 
I have been told that the direwolves play only a minor role in the Game of Thrones TV series, and one of the reasons for not using them much in that adaptation is that their large size immediately screams 'fake' to viewers. People are very familiar with dogs and what they are supposed to look like, so there is only so much you can get away with when it comes to inventing fantasy dogs for the screen. Obviously, there is no such problem with dragons or other creatures that we expect to be fantastical.

Which boils down to....I'm fine with making Huan an actual dog, not a CGI creation. If that means that Lúthien can't ride him in that one scene, so be it. I'd much rather have a believable Huan through the 4 seasons we get him than sacrifice him by making him too big to use/take seriously.
 
No luthien has to ride huan, i insist on that! In many movie adaptions horses for example are not real but puppets... Why? Because falling horses in battle scenes are too dangerous for real riders and animals... Yet you usually do not recognize these hoeses are fake. Even if you do not use cgi and go oldschool... There are a lot of possibilities, real movie people can do it! And if we can make a john rhyd davies a dwarf we also can make an irish wolfhound a giant hound..
 
No animals are descended from unfallen Maiar. Melian is the only non-demon Maia who reproduced, ever. Tolkien was explicit about this.
 
Are you sure? I thought in pome tolkien revised his views about the eagles and possibly other animals such as nahar... I'll look it up again!
 
What he said was that Eagles ought to be Maiar, but "unfortunately" in the LotR he had already written than Gwaehir and Lhandroval are descendants of Thorondor. Indicating that they can't both be Maiar and able to reproduce. (He ought to have changed it in his next LotR revision... but he didn't, so we're stuck with Thorondor being a flesh-and-blood bird, 30-fathom wingspan and all. I assume he'll be more reasonably-sized on screen.)

Melian was "allowed" to reproduce as a special part of Eru's plan to get Elven and Maia blood into mortals. Other than her, it's a result of imprisonment in flesh and perversion of their original nature.

But Nahar and the Hounds of Orome aren't Maiar, so I'm sure they can totally have babies. They may or may not also have souls because Tolkien didn't decide yes or no.
 
Are we talking about those lines attached to the myth transformed essay?

In this case i am not yet convinced... That is one of jrrts most vague , speculative and selfcontradicting texts.
 
If it were only expressed in the Myths Transformed series it would be quite iffy, true. But Tolkien was quite clear elsewhere too, that Maiar and Valar do not have children or reproduce. The "sons of the Valar" were part of the earlier versions like the Lost Tales and Quenta Noldorinwa, but were quite firmly rejected post-LotR. In letters, in removing the "Sons of the Valar" from the entire Quenta, etc. This wasn't an uncertain scribble on one piece of paper, this was consistently expressed in many pieces of writing over several years. It's echoed by Eru's chiding Aule for trying to have children by another means, too. Melian was "allowed" to have a single child as an exception to an otherwise iron-clad rule (that is from one of the Letters).

The Ainur are angels, not gods in Greek Mythology. In the Bible when the Grigori had kids with humans, they Fell and it was very, very bad. God was not pleased. Their children were hideous monsters, the Nephilim. This is the sort of origin Dragons and Werewolves might have. This is, apparently, where abominable monstrosities like Shelob come from.

And the act of procreation ties the procreator firmly to their body, like an incarnation -- or requires tying themselves firmly to a body -- because reproduction is a trait of Incarnates and wholly material creatures, not of Ainur. It's an effect which also has other causes but is in all cases except Melian a symptom of Falling -- and which fortunately makes it possible to "kill" demons and Morgoth himself.

Finally, it's one thing to marry an Elf. It's quite another for a Maia to commit bestiality!
 
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Keep in mind that the eagles, like the ents, were not there 'from the beginning' when the Valar and Maiar entered Middle Earth. The eagles only show up later, when, after the creation of the dwarves, Yavanna 'reminds' Manwë of that part of the Music.

Therefore, the Eagles are explicitly part of the creation of Arda, *not* pre-existing spirits like Maiar.

They are obviously intelligent, so there may be no practical difference between the Eagles and embodied Maiar. But....they're not the same thing.
 
There are also, apparently, air Maiar who take the form of miles-wide eagle-shaped clouds in the Akallabeth, but I think those must be separate people.
 
I am now willing to accept two categories of fairy animals: Animals who are NOT animals, but Maiar in Animal shape, but who do not reproduce and "Elevated Animals", Animals who ARE Animals but might have been given some sort of Souls by Illuvatar himself. These are intelligent Animals, but yet still Animals and not Ainur, and they DO reproduce. I think bringing the texts from most different eras and stages of developement of the cosmology into concordance would work best this way. I would also read the myth transformed passage this way.

Still a bit sad... I would have loved Thorondor/Nornore/Drondor as a Maia of Manwe's people who takes the shape of an Eagle and becomes the Archfather of the great Eagles... but I see your point, Tolkien as a catholic would have had his problems with that..
 
I'm sad too. We could ignore the statement that Gwaehir and Lhandroval are Thorondor's descendants and say Thorondor, alone out of the Eagles, is a Maia... if people were OK with a small contradiction with the LotR. That couldn't apply to the other Eagles though.


Is it notable that Thorondor apparently retires to Valinor after the First Age? We don't hear of him dying, but he disappears. And Gwaehir and Lhandroal are over 7000 years old by the end of the Third Age, so calling them "animals" is like calling Treebeard a "plant". Technically true, but an understatement. :)
 
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