Songbird

"Songbirds. They are the pride of Columbia. When I kill them, I would make them poultry, like when I eat chicken. If I kill every songbird, then Columbia would be much safer without them. My village is very afraid of Songbirds. If they come to my village, they would kill people and destroy buildings. I cannot let them invade there."

--Su Ji-Hoon, The Songbirds

A Songbird is a creature or construct of undetermined origins that is feared by the citizens of Columbia, and is Elizabeth's guardian. It is an influential character in BioShock Infinite, and also, in When the Cold Breeze Blows Away.

Design
A Voxophone recording, along with blueprints found at Fink Factory, show that Songbird was created by Fink Industries. As with most of Fink's technology, it was based on designs discovered through a Tear. The blueprints were described as showing "a merger of machine and man, that was the lesser of man yet the greater of both parties". In reality, Fink managed to gain the design blueprints for the Big Daddy. Collaborating with Yi Suchong of Rapture, experiments were made to create the beast. At first, multiple experiments were done with animals, such as gorillas and dogs, to create a successful psychological pairbond with Elizabeth. In the end, a crude prototype was assembled, connected to a breather. Attempts to psychologically indoctrinate the prototype were not enough, so Fink and his men left it abandoned in his old laboratory. In the end, the bond between Songbird and Elizabeth was established by a freak accident -- Songbird escaped the laboratory and accidentally crashed into Elizabeth's tower, forcing Elizabeth to repair its breather. This created a successful pairbond between the beast and Elizabeth, and it would protect her fiercely. On the other hand, Suchong erroneously believed that DNA — in particular, a hair sample, was the cause of the pairbond, and attempted multiple times to figure out how to replicate the Songbird's pairbond with his own Big Daddies.