The bird-like creatures that lured sailors to their doom with song were the Sirens.
In Greek mythology, the Sirens were dangerous beings whose enchanting voices and music drew sailors toward disaster. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus wanted to hear their song, so his crew tied him to the ship’s mast and stopped their own ears with beeswax. He alone could listen without steering the ship toward the Sirens.
Early Greek art commonly showed Sirens as creatures with women’s heads and bird bodies or wings. Over time, especially in later European art and popular culture, they were often confused with mermaids. The two are different: mermaids are fish-tailed water spirits, while the classical Sirens were associated with birds and deadly song.
The Sirens also appear in a story involving the Muses. After losing a singing contest against them, they were said in one tradition to have lost their feathers and fallen into the sea. Their name survives in the modern word “siren,” meaning a sound that commands attention or warns of danger.