Cuckow

Scripture references: Leviticus 11:16; Deuteronomy 14:15

Leviticus 11:16, "And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind." The verse names the shachaph as the third bird in a run of four within the larger catalogue of unclean fowl that opens at Leviticus 11:13. It sits between the tachmas (rendered "night hawk" in the KJV) and the nets ("hawk"), inside a list dominated by raptors, scavengers, and birds associated in the ancient world with carrion, night hunting, or the sea. The verse gives no description of the bird's appearance, diet, or habits beyond its place in the list, so everything known about its identity has to be reconstructed from the Hebrew word itself and from how ancient and modern translators have handled it.

The shachaph is textually certain (it is named twice, in Leviticus 11:16 and Deuteronomy 14:15, among the unclean birds) but its species identity is a real, unresolved translation question between "cuckow" and "sea gull" or "seamew." The Sanctum holds the citation itself as Canon-tier and holds the species identification as disputed, reporting both readings honestly rather than favoring one silently.