Vucub Caquix

Vucub-Caquix (K'iche': Wuqub’ Kaqix, [ʋuˈquɓ kaˈqiʃ], possibly meaning 'seven-Macaw') is the name of a bird demon defeated by the Hero Twins of a Kʼicheʼ-Maya myth preserved in an 18th-century document, entitled ʼPopol Vuhʼ.

References to the episode are already present on the Late Preclassic stela 25 from Izapa, near the Pacific coast, where a man with a mutilated arm looks upward towards a bird perched on a pole, and on a facade of the Copan ballcourt, where a war-serpent head inserted between the legs of a large bird holds the severed arm of Hunahpu.

[3] The episode has also been connected to Izapa's stela 2, where two small figures assumed to be the Twin Heroes flank a large descending bird personifier (perhaps a royal ancestor).

Leaving apart the representations on stone mentioned above, the identification of the Classic Maya bird-shooting scenes on pottery with the shooting of Vucub-Caquix causes problems.

Therefore, rather than referring to the Vucub-Caquix tale, the shooting of the Principal Bird Deity may well represent a now lost bird-shooting episode of Twin mythology.