Songbird Skewers

This dish originates in the kingdom of Ortolan, though it has spread elsewhere in the coastal South, found on the tables of nobility from Paragon to The Lap, as far as Harbourhead.

The dish is not named poetically… it is in fact made from songbirds, stripped of feathers and roasted whole with sage and pork fat to keep them moist, served on skewers or heaped on platters.

The origins of the dish can be found in methods devised by House Ledaal of the Realm, which had sought to increase the capture of Savoury Buntings in Ortolan. Their approach was to train trappers to set up vast systems of nets in groups of trees. At the center of the nets, a single caged bunting would be placed. Its legs would be broken, and its cries of distress would summon other buntings to assist… these would become stuck in the nets and could be gathered up each day and caged for shipping to market. It was found that other songbirds would also become caught in the nets, and these could serve to feed the trappers or be sold for a few coins to urban dwellers and peasants fond of sparrow pie.

This method continues to be used in Ortolan to gather songbirds for food, though Savoury Buntings are no longer to be found. In Paragon, the same dish is prepared almost exclusively with female canaries from the aviaries of the Prefect: the Prefect monopolizes canary breeding, selling off the males but restricting the females to prevent competing breeders from gaining control of them. To keep control of their numbers, the Canary females are killed and prepared for this dish.