The narrative’s Gothic horror elements are rooted primarily in its focus on a deep-seated human fear of nature, unknowable and uncontrollable, turning on humanity. Du Maurier first paints a pleasant natural scene in the story’s opening paragraph, wherein the narrator describes the autumn before the wind changes: “Until then the autumn had been mellow, soft. The leaves had lingered on the trees, golden-red, and the hedgerows were still green. The earth was rich where the plow had turned it” (59). This pastoral description and others like it provide sharp contrast with the wintry landscape that is the backdrop for the birds’ unnatural attacks.

When the east wind brings a hard winter with black frost, the birds become inexplicably violent. Like amateur burglars, they test the windows to see whether they can gain access to their prey, the Hockens. After the birds enter through the window in the children’s room to wage battle unsuccessfully, Nat notes to himself that the dead birds left behind are members of various species that “by nature’s law kept to their own flock and their own territory” (64), yet they defied nature’s law to make the assault.