In Tsonga belief the lightning-flash is a living creature, a bird sent down from Tilo. Where the bolt strikes, the bird is said to plunge into the ground and hide; doctors afterward dig at the spot to recover its traces, which are prized as a potent ingredient in protective and weather medicines. Junod records the conviction that lightning is thus caught and its power harnessed rather than merely feared. The bird of Heaven links the impersonal violence of the sky to the practical world of the diviner-healer, and beliefs in such a lightning-bird are shared across the neighbouring Southern Bantu peoples, among whom its name and attributes vary.