#yes the lark is totally a Romeo and Juliet reference

[sillylotrpolls]

(Unnecessarily complicated reason for poll below poll)

So, a prominent character in the Silmarillion is Lúthien. She is the precious only daughter of a powerful elf king and a demi-goddess, and she's very beautiful and good at dancing and sings like a bird and is 100% Tolkien's insert character for his wife (awww). She is also called Tinúviel, which means Nightingale.

Later, when Aragorn first meets Arwen, he calls her Tinúviel in reference to a famous song about Lúthien's beauty and grace. Arwen is all, lol, fun fact, that's my great-great-grandma you're talking about, makes sense. (She kindly does not mention that Lúthien is also Aragorn's ancestor if you go back far enough.) So if you haven't read the Silm (sensible of you), you can just picture Arwen when answering this poll.

Now, hypothetically, someone might be trying to write a fanfiction in which Legolas is compared to Lúthien for assorted reasons (mostly because it's funny). But this potential author is not really up on birds, particularly song birds, and so they are uncertain what the best/funniest bird comparison for Legolas would be. This possible author might desire the wisdom of tumblr on the topic, but prefer to keep things hypothetical, because heaven forbid they commit to creating anything.

I assume you understand.

tl;dr If Gimli came upon Legolas in the woods and had to compare him to a bird, what would be the most appropriate bird for him to choose? Bonus points if Thranduil is highly offended or gratified by the choice.

PS: Any Tolkien scholars in the audience want to weigh in on whether Jirt was at all influenced by the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale The Nightingale? Since I have recently learned just how much of LotR is referential I keep wondering about these things.