Origin story
Garuda, the king of birds, is the son of the sage Kashyapa and Vinata. When his mother was enslaved through a wager with her sister Kadru, Garuda flew to the heavens, defeated the guards of the nectar of immortality and carried the amrita away to win her freedom. Vishnu, pleased with his strength, made him immortal and took him as his vehicle.
He is the sworn enemy of serpents and is shown either as a great kite-like bird or as a winged man with a beak. In Kerala, Garuda crowns the flagstaffs of Vishnu temples and receives worship as a sub-deity, as at the Srinivasa Venkatachalapathy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, where a Garuda shrine stands within the compound.
Source: Wikipedia: Garuda — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garuda