In Rome, Italy, there is a VAMPIRIC WITCH called a striges that by the use of her magic can shape-shift into a crow. In her bird form the striges will then attack people, using its claws and beak to draw blood that it will then drink up. The striges is no doubt the modern incarnation of the STRIGA and the STRIGE.

Source: Day, Vampires, 233; Summers, The Vampire in Europe, 230; Wood, The Nineteenth Century, 52

In Romania and Macedonia there is a vampiric bird called a strige. It is created when a witch’s soul returns to plague the living. Using its long sharp beak that can easily cut the skin of a person so it can drink his blood, it will attack alone or in a flock.

Source: Bryant, Handbook of Death, 99; Cremene, Mythology of the Vampire in Romania; Gaster, Myth, Legend and Custom, 579; Hurwitz, Lilith, the First Eve, 48

In ancient Rome there was a deformed and vicious vampiric, owl-like creature with the face of a woman called a strigae. At night it flew out into the night sky to attack children and drain them of their blood. By day, it shape-shifted into the form of an old woman. The strigae fell under the domain of Hecate. Offerings of honey-cakes and chicken hearts as well as puppies and black lambs would keep it at bay. King Stephen I of Hungary (969–1038) made it against the law for strigae to leave their home at night or to do harm to anyone.

Source: Burns, Witch Hunts in Europe, 96-97, 195; Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 46; Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, 68-70, 132; Talasi, Acta Ethnographica, 129-169