[Thenamir]

Whether the chicken crosses the Greenway or the Greeway crosses the chicken depends entirely on your frame of reference.

In the realm of self-perception, we are not what we think we are, nor are we what others think we are. We are what we think others think we are. Therefore, if others think you are a chicken, then a chicken you are, regardless of how you perceive yourself.

Tol(chic)kien obviously understood this. Finding it hard to soar with eagles when running with chickens in real life, he created an idealized, perfected chicken as a story character. I propound that Gwaihir is an authorial self-insertion into LOTR, not as he actually lived, but what he wanted to be deep in his heart!!

And upon this point there can be no debate -- eagles had wings.

Re: the Balrog -- perhaps in a moment of meditating on the deep evils of mankind, Tolkien envisioned the Balrog as man in his most depraved state. The reference to wings (real or shadow) is a poignant symbolism for the chicken-wings of fallen man, dark, vast, wreathed in impressive smoke and flames, but ultimately useless, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." (Let not the readers of this post think that I am in any way comparing, by this particular Shakespearean reference, the works of Tolkien to "a tale told by an idiot" -- that tale is embodied in the collective posts which make up this thread.)