Thorondor as a Maia???

[The Saucepan Man]

From Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire, the Hobbit:

Eagles are not kindly birds. Some are cowardly and cruel. But the ancient race of the northern mountains were the greatest of all birds; they were proud and strong and noble-hearted.

Now this suggests to me that the Great Eagles of the Misty Mountains were a race of eagles, albeit of greater size and more noble disposition than the standard variety. More significantly, it says that they were birds, the greatest of birds admittedly, but birds nonetheless.

The fact that they were sentient is of no relevance, unless we are going to say that Carc's race and the thrush at Erebor were Maiar too.

Ah, you may say, but they could have been Maiar who clothed themselves in bird-form, and thus appeared as birds to Bilbo, who knew no better than to describe them as such when recording these events. But that does not change the fact that we have Tolkien (the true author) referring to them as birds in a published work. Perhaps this explains the quote from Myths Transformed that the phantom gave:

Huan and Sorontar [Quenya for Thorondor] could be Maiar - emissaries of Manwë. But unfortunately in The Lord of the Rings Gwaehir and Landroval are said to be descendants of Sorontar.

If the Eagles of the Third Age were no more than large birds, then surely their ancestors back to Thorondor would be birds too, rather than Maiar.

And, in any event, what is the problem, conceptually, with the Eagles simply being giant eagles? [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img] [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]