Daedalus hurled his nephew Perdix from the Acropolis out of jealousy when the boy's inventions threatened to surpass his own. Athena saved Perdix by transforming him into a partridge.
⚠ Apollodorus names the nephew Talos, while Ovid calls him Perdix. Ovid has Athena transform him into a partridge mid-fall; Apollodorus says he died and Daedalus was tried at the Areopagus.
Athena caught Perdix in mid-fall when Daedalus hurled him from the Acropolis and transformed him into a partridge, saving his life and punishing Daedalus by exposing the crime.
In Ovid's Metamorphoses 8, a partridge — the transformed Perdix — watches from a branch as Daedalus buries Icarus, clapping its wings in triumph at the poetic justice of the father's grief.
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