Enormous dark bird perched on a sea headland, its grey metal beak longer than the fishing canoe below it, where two Filipino fishermen stand hauling nets. The Minokawa of Bagobo belief, the bird said to swallow the moon.

steel beak and blade feathers

The Bagobo accounts make the eclipse animal a bird and not a serpent. Against the fishing boat below, the size is the whole claim: whatever swallows the moon has to be larger than anything anyone has seen.

Basis: Bagobo eclipse accounts · AI-generated

About the Minokawa

A bird large enough to swallow the moon, from the Bagobo of Mindanao: the same eclipse the Visayas explain with a serpent.

Laura Watson Benedict, Bagobo myths (in Journal of American Folklore) (1913)Early twentieth-century collection of Bagobo narrative from Mindanao, the standard early source for this material. Collected by an outsider, with the limitations that implies.
Maximo D. Ramos, Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology (1971)The standard classification, which sets the regional eclipse-eaters beside one another and makes the pattern visible.
Damiana L. Eugenio, Philippine Folk Literature: The Myths (1993)Collected myth texts from across the islands, including the regional eclipse narratives.