Reading about early XX Century Olympics and, while I have a decent idea of how modern archery competitions work, I don't really understand what was going on back then. Was there a bird shaped target? Was it moving?
For what matters, the other terms are also obscure, so that, aside from distance and people shooting arrows at something, I don't really know what was going on.
I happen to have a bird on my desk right now!
The early Olympics were rather ad-hoc affairs. The lack of international sporting standards meant that sports were often localised and run according to local rules and variations. The 1900 Paris Olympics used French rounds, the 1904 St Louis Games used American/English rounds, the 1908 London Games used English rounds. The 1920 Antwerp Games used a format that was a popular pastime in Belgium - popinjay.
Popinjay - elsewhere known as pole archery - involves shooting bird-like objects off a pole. The most common form is vertical, which involves essentially shooting straight up and knocking a "bird" off the pole. Horizontal events are also practiced, though not as popular as the vertical version. Each bird is worth a point value, and some rules have "king" birds on top of the pole that score more, though there are no standard international rules.
Only three nations participated in the archery event in 1920: the hosts Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Unsurprisingly, countries with a larger popinjay culture.
With that background, the large bird, small bird and moving bird events probably make more sense to you. These days, the sport has shrunk to a few clubs in Belgium and one set up in Winnipeg by Belgian immigrants. I'm collaborating on a project with that club to present a video on pole archery.
Further Reading: