The Goofus bird is a mythical, backwards-flying bird, originating in

lumberjack Lumberjack is a mostly North American term for workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees. The term usually refers to loggers in the era before 1945 in the United States, when trees were felled us ...

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

. It is also known variously as the ''Filla-ma-loo bird'' or the ''Flu-fly bird''. The Goofus Bird flies backwards, as it does not care where it is going, only where it has been, and it builds its nest upside down. It is described as having a conspicuous appearance, with a turkey-like head, long green neck, with silver scales, a black right wing and a pink left wing. A person likened to a Goofus Bird is a person low in intellectual curiosity and indifferent to their forward direction. ''Goofus'' is a possible origin of the word ''doofus,'' slang for a person prone to foolishness or stupidity, perhaps influenced by the German word ''doof'', meaning stupid. The Goofus bird is one of many

fearsome critters In North American folklore and American mythology, fearsome critters were tall tale animals jokingly said to inhabit the wilderness in or around logging camps,Dorson, Richard M. ''Man and Beast in American Comic Legend.'' (Bloomington, IN: Indi ...

of lumberjack folklore, fantastical beasts that were said to inhabit the frontier wilderness of North America, and is an example of a ' tall tale', a story with unbelievable elements related as if it were factual.

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