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Learning About Birds: Exploring the Relationship Between Beak Type and Diet

All birds have beaks. They are used for finding and accessing food, self defense, and building nests. Beaks are actually an extension of a bird's skull and are covered in a protein sheath called keratin, the same protein that gives our fingernails strength. 

Birds eat a wide variety of foods. Some birds eat fruit and nuts, and some eat seeds. There are birds that eat insects, and birds that eat small mammals and reptiles. Many sea birds and water fowl eat fish. There are even birds that eat flower nectar. Tearing apart fruit requires a very different beak than extracting nectar from a flower does, so many birds have developed highly specialized beaks, specific to their diet. 




Common types of beaks:
Meat Eater- Birds of prey, like eagles and hawks, have sharp powerful hooked beaks for tearing meat.



Fruit and Nut Eater- Birds that eat a lot of fruit and nuts, like macaws, have strong beaks with a sharp hook at the tip for tearing fruit and cracking shells.



Fish Eater- Fish eating birds, like pelicans, have long narrow dagger like beaks for catching fish beneath the surface of the water.



Seed Eater- Birds that eat seeds, like finches, have short cone like beaks for pecking up seeds.



Insect Eater- Pointed thin beaks are perfect for insect eating birds, like woodpeckers, to search for insects under bark and dirt with.



Nectar Eater- Birds that eat nectar, like hummingbirds, often have long slender beaks for reaching deep into flowers and extracting nectar.




Bird Beak Exploration Activity:
This is a really fun, hands-on activity for exploring the relationship between bird beak types and diet.

Set up a few different shaped tools to use as "beaks" like tweezers, a clothes pin, a fork, a spoon, chop sticks, a straw, a pair of pliers, and any other tools you can think of that could be representative of a type of bird beak. 

Set up dishes with items that represent different types of bird foods like dried beans or seeds, rubber bands buried in dirt (to represent earthworms), a walnut or other shelled nuts, and a water bottle filled with water (to represent a flower with nectar). 

Challenge your kids to explore and decide which "beak" works best for each type of food. Then have a discussion about all the different shaped and sized bird beaks out there and how they are adapted to fit different diets.







Dissecting Owl Pellets
Another really interesting activity you can do to learn about bird diets is dissecting owl pellets. Since birds don't have teeth, they can't chew, they eat their food whole or in torn chunks. Food travels down the esophagus to a series of digestive organs that break down food via churning and digestive juices. Any parts of the food that cannot be broken down, like fur and bones, are compacted into a small ball and expelled back out the bird's mouth. 

A single owl pellet can contain the bones of several small mammals, making them excellent for dissecting. It might sound a little gross, but it's actually really neat!




Check out these owl pellet dissection kits from Home Science Tools: Owl Pellet Dissection Kit

Additional Resources:

-All About Birds Printable Unit Study- my printable bird unit study has a section about the relationship between bird beak and diet.


-Bird Adaptations- Beaks from Virtual Teacher Aid has lots of pictures of different variations of beak types. Click on the pictures for information about the bird and it's diet.

-Birds, Their Different Beaks, and the Functions They Perform from Zoo Portraits 

-Beaks: Bird Feeding Adaptations video from Naturalist Outreach

-Bird Beaks: What Do Birds Eat video from BioBush

If you enjoyed this post, check out the rest of the posts in my Learning About Birds series

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