Key Points

- Man-eating birds with bronze beaks, razor feathers and poisonous dung

- Killed by Hercules

Brief Bio

These birds were pets of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt; or had been brought up by Ares, the god of war. They migrated to a marsh in Arcadia to escape a pack of wolves. There they bred quickly and swarmed over the countryside, destroying crops, fruit trees, and townspeople.

The Stymphalian birds were defeated by Heracles (Hercules) in his sixth labour for Eurystheus.

The surviving birds made a new home on the island of Aretias in the Euxine Sea. The Argonauts later encountered them there.