INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT BIRDS

    • The oldest bird was known as an Archaeopteryx and lived in the Jurassic period about 150 million years ago. It was the size of a raven, was covered with feathers, and had wings. Because it did not have the basic features of flight, it is uncertain if it could fly.
        
    • The biggest bird that ever existed on Earth is the flightless elephant bird of Madagascar, which is now extinct. It weighed about 1000 lb. Seven ostrich eggs would fit inside one elephant bird’s egg. These birds died out 400 years ago, but people still find pieces of their tough-shelled eggs.

    • There are around 10,000 different species of birds worldwide. It is believed that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs. Approximately 2/3 of all the bird species are found in tropical rain forests.

    • Ornithologists study birds. All birds have the same basic parts but are unique in their own ways. All birds are warm-blooded, which means they can control and maintain a constant body temperature even if the temperature around them changes.

 

    • The main characteristic of a bird is feathers. No other animal has feathers. Birds have hollow bones which help them fly.

 

    • Not all birds have equally hollow bones. Those that dive into water—like gannets, terns, and kingfishers—and those that fly very fast, like swifts, have less air in their long bones than other birds.

 

    • Some birds like penguins and emus are classified as flightless: despite having wings, they cannot fly.

 

    • Approximately 75% of wild birds live for less than a year. The larger the bird, the more likely it is to live longer. The large wandering albatross, for example, can live for up to 80 years.

 

    • The smallest flightless bird is the Island rail. This tiny bird lives on the remote island of Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic Ocean and is just 5" long, about the same size as a hen chick.

 

    • Only one mammal can fly: the bat. However, it flies differently from the bird. Insects also do not fly the same as birds.

 

    • Birds mostly use their keen eyesight to find food. They use their beak and their claws to get bugs, worms, small mammals, fish, fruit, grain, or nectar. Birds play a very important part in the natural control of insects and in the dispersal of seeds.

 

    • Birds crystallize their urine and excrete it, along with feces, out their cloaca.

 

    • To make them more lightweight, most birds do not have bladders to store urine. Rather than producing liquid urine to get rid of wastes, they produce a white, pasty substance. However, while an ostrich does not have a bladder like a mammalian bladder, it is unique among birds because it does have a complete separation of feces and urine.

 

    • A bird's normal body temperature is usually 7-8 degrees hotter than a human's body temperature. Up to three-quarters of the air a bird breathes is used just for cooling down since they are unable to sweat.

 

    • A bird's heart beats 400 times per minute while resting and up to 1000 beats per minute while flying.

 

    • A bird’s lungs are much more complicated and efficient and take up more space than those of mammals, such as humans. A human’s lungs compose about 1/20 of its body, but a bird’s takes up 1/5.

 

    • The only known poisonous bird in the world is the hooded pitohui of Papua, New Guinea. The poison is found in its skin and feathers.

 

    • The toucan's bill is useful as a feeding tool. The birds use them to reach fruit on branches that are too small to support their weight, and also to skin their pickings such as insects, young birds, eggs, or lizards.

 

    • Each feather on a bird's body is a finely tuned structure that serves an important role in the bird's activities. Feathers help birds fly, but they also help them show off, blend in, stay warm, and keep dry. Some feathers have evolved as specialized airfoils for efficient flight.

 

    • Birds have many physical features, besides wings, that work together to enable them to fly. They need lightweight, streamlined, rigid structures for flight. The four forces of flight – weight, lift, drag and thrust – affect the flight of birds.

 

    • Remiges (wing flight feathers) These feathers are strong and stiff, supporting the bird during flight. They are the farthest away from the body, attached to the skin of the wing on the 'hand' of the bird. In most bird species, there are 10 primary feathers on each wing.

 

    • Ravens are great at mimicking human speech and sounds.

 

    • While ravens in the wild are unlikely to pick up human language, in captivity they can become quite talkative.

 

    • Some ravens are even better than parrots at mimicking human speech, not to mention sounds from the human world like car engines revving or toilets flushing. In the wild, meanwhile, ravens sometimes imitate other animals, mimicking predators like wolves or foxes to attract them to tasty carcasses they're unable to break open on their own.

 

    • Ostrich eyes are the largest of any animal that lives on land (though they can't rival some of the massive creatures that inhabit the depths of the sea). Approximately the size of a billiard ball, their eyes are actually bigger than their brains.

 

    • Cardinals (along with several other bird species) sometimes cover themselves in crushed or living ants, smearing them over their feathers, or allowing living ants to crawl on them. While scientists still aren't sure what the purpose of "anting" is, some believe the birds use the formic acid secreted during their ant bath to help get rid of lice and other parasites.

 

    • When owls catch larger animals (raccoons and rabbits, for instance), they tear them up into more manageable, bite-size pieces. But they've also been known to simply swallow smaller animals, from insects to mice, whole. Owls then regurgitate pellets full of indigestible elements of their meal like animal bones and fur.

 

    • When they nap in groups, the ducks on the perimeter keep guard by sleeping with one eye open. While the other ducks sleep more deeply, those on the outside of the circle also keep one side of their brain awake, even as they doze, so that predators won’t be able to sneak up on them.

 

    • Native to New Zealand, kiwis are a bizarre, land-bound bird. Scientists, so mystified by the kiwi's strange properties—which include feathers that feel like hair, heavy bones filled with marrow, and nostrils on the tip of their nose (rather than on the base of their beak like most birds).

 

    • Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards

 

    • Hummingbirds are incredibly lightweight. The average hummingbird is around 4 grams (one gram less than a nickel), while the smallest, the bee hummingbird, is closer to 1.6 grams, less than the weight of a penny. The largest member of the hummingbird family, meanwhile, is the aptly named giant hummingbird, which can get up to 24 grams—enormous for a hummingbird.

 

    • Hummingbirds eat about every ten minutes, slurping down twice their body weight in nectar every day.

 

    • A Ruby-throated Hummingbird, which weighs less than 0.2 oz., has to beat its wings more than 52 times a second to hover in front of a flower.

 

    • The bird that lays the smallest egg in the world is the bee hummingbird. Its egg is just under 0.5" x 0.25" and weighs a mere 0.02 oz.

 

    • The Rufous hummingbird is the smallest migrant bird. It is less than 4 in. (9 cm) long and flies every year from Alaska to Mexico, a round trip of 3,800 miles (6,400 km).

 

    • The sword-billed hummingbird is the only bird with a bill longer than its body.

 

    • The bird with the most feathers is the whistling swan, with up to 25,000 feathers. Hummingbirds, on the other hand, are so small that they have fewer than 1,000.

 

    • Pigeons are believed to be the first domesticated bird. Pigeons were used for millennia to deliver messages, including military information, and the outcome of the early Olympic games. Though non-avian mail delivery has become more popular over time, pigeons were used in World War II to carry select messages.

 

    • While most parrots only learn around 50 words, some African gray parrots have been known to learn hundreds of words.

 

    • Some swiftlets, appropriately named Edible-nest swiftlets, build nests almost exclusively from their hardened saliva. The saliva nests are considered a delicacy in some countries—in China, they are most frequently used to make bird’s nest soup—and are one of the most expensive foods in the world, despite having little flavor and no real nutritional value.

 

    • Worm-eating Bassian thrushes have been known to dislodge their prey from piles of leaves by directing their farts at them. The excretion of gas shifts the leaf-litter on the ground and apparently provokes worms to move around, revealing their location.

 

    • Acorn woodpeckers store acorns by drilling holes in trees, fence posts, utility poles, and buildings, and depositing their nuts there. They have been known to store up to 50,000 acorns—each in its own tiny hole—in a single tree, called a "granary tree."

 

    • While penguins might stand out on land, underwater their black and white coloring helps them stay hidden from both predators and prey. As they swim, their black backs blend in with the darker ocean water below them so that they're difficult to spot from above. Their white chests, meanwhile, help them blend in with the lighter, brighter surface of the water, so that from below, they're near-invisible.

 

    • While ravens in the wild are unlikely to pick up human language, in captivity they can become quite talkative. Some ravens are even better than parrots at mimicking human speech, not to mention sounds from the human world like car engines revving or toilets flushing.

 

    • In the wild, meanwhile, ravens sometimes imitate other animals, mimicking predators like wolves or foxes to attract them to tasty carcasses they're unable to break open on their own.

 

    • Ostrich eyes are the largest of any animal that lives on land (though they can't rival some of the massive creatures that inhabit the depths of the sea). Approximately the size of a billiard ball, their eyes are actually bigger than their brains.

 

    • The egg of the ostrich, the world's largest. An ostrich egg needs to be boiled for 2 hours to get a hard-boiled egg.

 

    • Cardinals (along with several other bird species) sometimes cover themselves in crushed or living ants, smearing them over their feathers, or allowing living ants to crawl on them. While scientists still aren't sure what the purpose of "anting" is, some believe the birds use the formic acid secreted during their ant bath to help get rid of lice and other parasites.

 

    • When ducks nap in groups, the ducks on the perimeter keep guard by sleeping with one eye open. While the other ducks sleep more deeply, those on the outside of the circle also keep one side of their brain awake, even as they doze, so that predators won’t be able to sneak up in the world, despite having little flavor and no real nutritional value apparently provokes worms to move around, revealing their location.

 

    • Though they disappear after three months, young hoatzin (also known as "stink birds" for their unique stench) have two claws on each wing, which they can use to climb across tree branches or pull themselves out of water onto dry land. The claws also help chicks hide from predators: After jumping from their nest into the water below, the little hoatzin swim some distance, then pull themselves on land with their claws. When the coast is clear, they use their claws to climb up onto a tree branch.

 

    • Hoatzin chicks have two claws on each wing. When they climb out of the nest, they use their claws to hold on to mangrove trees. They lose their claws once they mature, but they remain poor flyers.

 

    • Budgerigars, or budgies, a common parakeet, are the only bird species so far discovered who are susceptible to contagious yawning. While humans, dogs, chimps, lab rats, and a few other creatures have all been known to catch each other's yawns, budgies are the first non-mammal species observed exhibiting the behavior. Many scientists believe the unconscious, instinctual response may be a primitive way of showing empathy, or it might be a sign of group alertness.

 

    • Roadrunners For a relatively small bird, they can zip along through the desert at a cool 20 miles per hour. That's as fast as any Olympic sprinter. But, because they are so quick, they frequently catch rattlesnakes. When they do, they swallow them whole.

 

    • There is no bird known that has a bigger bill in relation to the size of its body than the Toucan. Interestingly, the bill is not solid. It is formed of a lattice-work of hollow sections—a little like the inside of a sponge. This means that it can be big and very robust without being heavy. Even so, when it comes time to rest, the only way a Toucan can get some sleep is to twist its head all the way round and rest its bill out along its back.

 

    • But did you know that Toucans, if kept in captivity, can also pick up quite a wide vocabulary?

 

    • Tinamous are a very timid creature. It is rarely seen as it is also very well camouflaged. They tend to creep about at ground level keeping out of everyone else's way. Once they know they have been spotted, they tend to panic. They shoot upwards in a manic, high-speed flight. And they can go really fast. Unfortunately, they tend not to look where they are going.

 

    • Ostriches tend to look down on humans—from a height of about nine feet! They can run up to 60 miles per hour; not only are they tall and fast but they are also pretty heavy, weighing in at a hefty 350 pounds.

 

    • The shell of an ostrich egg is about six times thicker than a chicken egg and an adult human could stand on one without it cracking. So, they are big and fast and heavy. Buy they're not so smart. In fact, an ostrich's brain is even smaller than its eye. In case you are wondering... no, they don't really stick their heads in the sand!

 

    • The Wandering Albatross is the largest living flying bird. An adult male weighs about 25 pounds. It has a wingspan of 12 feet. So, an adult human could lie down under the outstretched wing and be completely covered. Individual birds are also very long lived. The typical age for an albatross to reach is about 70 or more years. They can fly up to 600 miles in one day.

 

    • An albatross can soar for as long as six hours without moving its wings.

 

    • When the young albatross leaves the nest for the first time, it will spend at least seven years flying out at sea before returning to land for the first time. During that maiden flight, a typical albatross will cover something close to 1.5 million miles. In its lifetime, an albatross will normally cover 15 million miles—the equivalent of flying to the moon and back 18 times!

 

    • The Royal Albatross' eggs take 79 days to hatch.

 

    • One of the owl's distinctive features is the presence of little 'horns' or 'ears' sticking up from the top of its head. These are actually neither ears nor horns! They are simply tufts of feathers and while there are several theories about why they are there - from an aid to camouflage to an attempt to look more frightening to aggressors - nobody really knows what they are for!

 

    • Owls can rotate their heads almost 360°, but they cannot move their eyes. They live on every continent except Antarctica. Soft fringes on their wings make their flight essentially silent.

 

    • When owls catch larger animals (raccoons and rabbits, for instance), they tear them up into more manageable, bite-size pieces. But they've also been known to simply swallow smaller animals, from insects to mice, whole. Owls then regurgitate pellets full of indigestible elements of their meal like animal bones and fur.

 

    • Five tanager species are found in North America: summer, scarlet, western, hepatic, and flame-colored. Tanagers construct nests on branches as high as 75 feet.

 

    • There are a few mostly red birds (cardinals, pine grosbeaks, vermillion flycatchers) in North America, but the male summer tanager is the only one with completely red coloring.

 

    • Birds carry several diseases and disease-causing parasites that may be transmissible to humans. Typically, these diseases are transmitted via contact with bird feces. Main agents of diseases include those of encephalitis, E. coli, Salmonella, West Nile and bird flu viruses.

 

    • The most dangerous bird in the world is the cassowary. Southern cassowaries can grow up to 6 ft. tall and 130 lbs. and are equipped with large, sharp spurs with which they kick their enemies to defend themselves and their territory. With one kick it can kill its enemy.

 

    • The peregrine falcon can dive as fast as 200 mph when hunting prey.

 

    • Many birds are considered incredible navigators: when transported 400 miles from its home, a racing pigeon can find its way back in 1 day.

 

    • The Australian pelican has the longest bill of any bird in the world. It is nearly 2 feet in length. The sword-billed hummingbird, with its 3.9-inch bill, is the only bird with a bill that’s longer than its body.

 

    • The only bird with nostrils at the end of its beak is the kiwi. This placement helps it sniff for food, such as worms and insects on the ground. It often snorts to clear its nostrils.

 

    • Unlike most birds that sing, a woodpecker will drum its beak against a tree. Other woodpeckers can identify which bird it is by the sound of the drumming.

 

    • The most talkative bird in the world is the African gray parrot. One parrot could say over 800 words. Most species of parrots can learn only 50.

 

    • Many birds, such as starlings, sing notes too high for humans to hear.

 

    • The chicks of large bird species often take the longest to hatch. Emu chicks, for example, take 60 days to hatch. Small songbirds take just 2 weeks.

 

    • A green woodpecker can eat as many as 2,000 ants per day.

 

    • The Japanese crested ibis is one of the rarest birds in the world. Probably fewer than 50 crested ibises are alive today.

 

    • Falconry was developed more than 4,000 years ago in eastern and central Asia. Birds were used because they could kill animals beyond the range of a hunter’s weapon. Genghis Khan reportedly had 10,000 falconers.

 

    • Coalminers often used canaries to detect poisonous levels of carbon monoxide gas. Miners knew that if the canary passed out, they were in danger, too.

 

    • The marsh warbler can mimic more than 80 different birds. Other renowned mimics include mockingbirds and lyrebirds.

 

    • A pelican’s pouch-like beak can hold up to 2.5 gallons of water at a time. The beak will shrink to squeeze out the water before the pelican swallows its food.

 

    • Though it looks like a bird’s knee is bending backwards, what is bending backward is actually its ankle. Below its ankle is an extended foot bone, leading to the toes. A bird’s real knee is usually hidden by feathers.

 

    • A bird’s real knee is usually hidden by feathers.

 

    • The Mallee fowl is famed for making a huge compost pile for its nest. Its eggs are incubated by the heat given off by the rotting vegetation.

 

    • Social weaverbirds live in huge communal nests that look like a huge haystack spread across a treetop. Some nests can weigh a few tons, have over 400 birds living in them, and may be 100 years old.

 

    • The heaviest bird of prey is the Andean condor. It can weigh up to 27 lb.

 

    • The most common wild bird in the world is the red-billed Quelea, with an estimated adult breeding population of 1.5 billion pairs. It mostly lives in sub-Saharan Africa and thousands of birds can be in a single flock. The most common nonwild bird is the chicken.

 

    • Flamingos pair for a lifetime. Some stay with their mates for 50 years or more. The type of diet a bird eats in the wild is directly related to the shape of a bird’s beak.

 

    • While most male birds do not have a penis, the Argentine Lake Duck’s penis can extend 17", the longest of any bird known. The duck itself is only about 16 inches tall. The base of the penis is covered with coarse spines, and the tip is soft and brush-like, perhaps to clean sperm that may have been deposited in the female’s oviduct by another suitor. When not in use, the corkscrew shaped penis retracts into the duck’s abdomen.

 

    • Gentoo Penguins are the fastest swimming birds, reaching speeds of 22 mph (36 km/h). Emperor Penguins can stay under water for up to 18 minutes.

 

    • Arctic terns have the longest annual migration of any bird. They fly 25,000 miles (40,000 m) from the Arctic to the Antarctic and then back again.

 

    • Bar-headed Geese fly across the Himalayas, the highest mountains in the world. They fly nearly 5 miles (over 8,000 m) up in the sky, almost as high as jet planes.

 

    • The highest-flying bird is the Griffon Vulture. In 1973, one collided with an airplane more than 6.8 miles above the Ivory Coast in Africa.

 

    • The largest, tallest, and heaviest bird in the world is the ostrich. Male ostriches can reach up to 9 ft. tall (2.7 m) and weigh up to 350 lb. (160 kg). Their eyes are bigger than any other land animals' eyes and are even larger than their brain.

 

    • The ostrich lays the biggest egg in the world. It measures 7" x 5" and weighs 3 pounds. However, the biggest egg for the size of the mother is laid by the kiwi and is a third of the weight of the bird. It is 5" long and can weigh as much as 1 lb. This would be the equivalent of an ostrich laying an 88 lb. (40 kg.) egg.

 

    • The ostrich is the only bird that willingly takes care of other females’ eggs.

 

    • For such a tiny bird, the wren has a surprisingly loud song. The song of a European wren is made of more than 700 different notes a minute and can be heard 1,650 feet (500 m) away.

 

    • The Emperor Penguin is the only bird that lays its eggs in the middle of winter. By laying its eggs so early, it gives its young a head start. The babies need all spring, summer, and fall to grow big enough to survive the next winter.

 

    • Oilbirds eat oil palm fruits, which make the birds oily too. People near the caves where the oilbirds lived used to trap the oilbirds and boil them down for the oil.

 

    • The fastest flying bird in a dive is the Peregrine falcon. It averages speeds of over 110 mph (180 km/h).

 

    • Oilbirds are the only birds that use echolocation the way that bats do. However, bats are much better at it. A bat can even fly through the blades of a moving fan. Oilbirds are also the only nocturnal fruit-eating birds in the world.

 

    • Birds have three fingers on each wing. The first, the thumb, supports a small part of the wing called the alula (a.k.a bastard wing). The second and third fingers support the main flight feathers.

 

    • Birds typically have two, three, or four toes. A typical perching bird has three pointing forward, and one back. Birds that run on hard ground have only three, all pointing forward. Ostriches only have two toes, which are shaped like the hoof of an antelope.

 

    • The Sooty tern spends more time in the air than any other bird. It takes off over the ocean and flies for at least 3 years without settling on water or land. Swifts also spend most of their lives in the air. They can even sleep in the air by gliding on air currents with their wings outstretched.

 

    • Birds don’t fall off of a branch when they sleep because their toes automatically clench around the twig they are standing on. Because the grabbing action is done by tendons rather than muscles, the birds can sleep without danger of falling.

 

    • The wishbone (or “merrythought” bone) is a bird’s fused collarbone. The strongest fliers have the widest angles in their wishbones. They are the only vertebrate animals to have a fused collarbone.

 

    • The linear flight formations of migratory birds are called echelons, with the most common shapes being the “V” or the “J.” In fact, a true V-shaped formation is less common than a J formation.

 

    • Birds fly in formation a) because it saves energy and b) to facilitate orientation and communication among the birds.

 

    • The word "parakeet" literally means "long tail."

 

    • The most yolks ever found in a single chicken's egg is nine.

 

    • Air sacs may make up 1/5 of the body volume of a bird.

 

    • What keeps a bird up in the air is the shape of its wings. The first humans to discover how birds stay aloft were Australian Aborigines when they invented the boomerang.

 

    • The fastest level flight by a bird has been seen in both the Spine-tailed Swift and the Red-breasted Merganser (a duck). They have flown at 100 mph (161 km/h) in level flight.

 

    • The slowest flying bird is the American Woodcock. It can fly at just 5 mph (8 km/h). When hummingbirds hover, they move at 0 mph. Additionally, hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards under power, registering a negative speed.

 

    • Lighthouses are dangerous for birds. The beams attract birds, especially in misty conditions, and many are killed when they fly into the glass.

 

    • Birds sense winter is coming by 1) changes in hormones that cause them to put on fat, 2) the changing length of the day, and 3) sensing small changes in air pressure, which is important in predicting weather changes.

 

    • The Bald Eagle builds the largest tree nest of all birds, measuring about 9.5 ft. (2.9 m) across. The largest nest ever found was nearly 10 ft. wide and weighed close to 3 tons.

 

    • Woodcocks and many ducks have their eyes placed at the sides of their heads so that they have a 360-degree field of vision.

 

    • A special arrangement of blood vessels cools the blood going out to the feet and warms the blood coming back, so even when standing on the ice, birds don’t lose too much heat.

 

    • Both the Bee and the Vervain Hummingbirds build the smallest nests of all birds, measuring 3/4" across and 1.2" deep.

 

    • Birds that are raised for meat and eggs (poultry) are the largest source of protein eaten by humans.

 

    • To attract a mate, a male frigate bird will blow up its red throat pouch. The pouch can be as big as a person’s head.

 

    • Depending on the species, a woodpecker’s tongue can be up to 4" long. It stores this long tongue by curling it in and sticking it through a specialized opening at the back of its neck, where it can then put it between the skull and skin.

 

    • Wind farms kill approximately a half-million birds per year in the United States, according to a 2008 Fish and Wildlife study. Nearly 10,000 birds, almost all of which are protected by the migratory bird acts, are killed every year at the wind farm in Altamont Pass, CA, alone.

 

    • Approximately 200 people have died since 1988 because of airborne collision between airplanes and birds. Bird strikes cause $300 million of damage each year to aircraft. The first recorded bird strike was in 1905, when Orville Wright’s plane hit a bird and killed it.

 

    • In the novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ (1960), author Harper Lee used the mockingbird to symbolize innocence.

 

    • Vulture stomach acid is 10 to 100 times stronger than human stomach acid. Vultures have stomach acid so corrosive that they can digest carcasses infected with anthrax.

 

    • No other living being other than birds have feathers. The main function is to help them fly. They also waterproof birds and protect them from UV rays and other harmful elements.

 

    • A Bald Eagle is called “bald” because it is piebald (black and white), not because it doesn’t have any feathers.

 

    • Eleven percent of the world’s bird species is endangered. Draining wetlands and felling forests are the main causes of damage, but pollution and pesticides also play a part.

 

    • Before 1840, there were thousands of millions of passenger pigeons in North America. However, they were slaughtered for food until only one was left, a female called Martha. She died when she was 12 years old in 1914, in a zoo in Ohio.

 

    • More than 150 kinds of birds have become extinct since 1600, though many more may have died out that scientists don’t know about. It wasn’t just European explorers that killed bird species.

 

    • Archeology shows that when people first arrived in ancient times in Hawaii and on islands in the South Pacific and Caribbean, they killed many birds Europeans had never seen before.

 

    • Though the term “eagle eyed” implies that eagles have keen vision, only the Wedge-tailed Eagle can see better than humans (2½ times better). Kestrels and falcons have about the same power of sight as we do.

 

Given names for groups or flocks of birds:

 

Birds of prey Cast, cauldron, kettle

Cormorants Flight

Crows Murder, congress

Ducks Rafts, team, paddling

Eagles Convocation, congregation

Finches Charm

Flamingos Flamboyance

Geese Gaggle, plump, skein

Gulls Colony

Herons Siege, sedge

Jays Band, party, scold

Lark Bevy, exaltation, ascension

Raves Conspiracy

Owls Parliament, wisdom, study

Starling Chattering, affliction

Swans Wedge, ballet, lamentation

Turkeys Rafter, gobble

Woodpecker Descend, herd

Wrens Chime

 

    • The Fieldfare birds have a special way to attack an enemy bird. They gang up on it and make it fly to the ground. Then the Fieldfares fly into the air and drop poop on the bird.

 

    • The seagulls in the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds (1963) were fed a mixture of wheat and whisky so they would stand around and not fly too much.

 

    • Birds play a central role in many creation myths. Birds are also often associated with the journey of the soul after death or as mediators between the dead and living.

 

    • Famous birds include Ba in Egyptian mythology, Bar Juchne in the Talmud, The Cu Bird in Mexican folklore, the Firebird in Native American mythologies, Harpies in Greek mythology, the Phoenix in Egyptian mythology, Quetzalcoatl in Aztec mythology, and the Raven in Native American religions.

 

    • Famous birds in literature include the Albatross in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Archimedes in The Once and Future King, Chicken Little, Chanticleer in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Fawkes and Hedwig in Harry Potter, Mother Goose, the Raven in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” Owl in Winnie the Pooh, Thorondor (the king of eagles) in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and The Ugly Duckling.

 

    • Famous birds in cartoons, comics, and films include Big Bird in Sesame Street, Buzz Buzzard in Woody Woodpecker, Disney’s Darkwing Duck, Footloops cereal’s Toucan Sam, Woodstock in the

 

    • Peanuts comic strip, Woody Woodpecker, and Iago in Aladdin.

 

    • Someone who suffers from "anatidaephobia" believes that somewhere, somehow a duck or goose is constantly watching them. The word "anatidaephobia" is from the Greek word anatidae, which means ducks, geese or other water fowls, and phobos is Greek for fear.

 

    • In the United States alone, there are over 40 million pet birds.

 

    • The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska polluted approximately 1,180 miles of coastline and killed up to 100,000 seabirds.

 

  • Cats kill billions of birds per year. In the continental U.S. alone, between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds are killed by cats annually.
 

Source: https://www.hostalalmanzor.com/curiosidades-aves and others.