Fun Bird Facts

1. 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.
2. Over time, a surprising number of birds have lost their ability to fly. Being flightless has several advantages. For example, a flightless bird doesn’t need to develop and carry large flight muscles or burn up the energy that flying requires. A flightless bird can also get by with less food, which means it can survive in places where food is scarce.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. In the movie The Birds (1963), the scene where actress Tippi Hedren is attacked took a week to shoot. The birds were attached to her clothes by long nylon threads so they could not fly away.