Birds

📖 In short

Have you seen a sparrow hopping on a branch or a pigeon flying over the roof? They're birds! A bird is an animal whose body is covered in feathers, and birds are the only animals in the world with feathers. All birds have two wings and a beak and lay eggs, and most can fly high in the sky.

🤩 Did you know?

The biggest bird is the ostrich, up to about 2.5 meters tall, but it can't fly!
A tiny hummingbird's heart beats more than 1000 times a minute.
The oldest bird we know of lived about 150 million years ago, in the time of the dinosaurs.
Some birds help trees grow, because they eat fruit and spread the seeds to new places.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Feathers, the birds' secret

Feathers keep a bird warm in the cold, protect it from rain and help it fly. Some birds have bright, beautiful feathers that catch the eye, and some have feathers the color of trees and earth that help them hide.

🔍 Bones as light as straw

Birds' bones are hollow and full of air, so they're very light. This helps a bird rise into the air without tiring. Its chest muscles are very strong to flap its wings.

💡 A beak for every food

The shape of a bird's beak shows what it eats: a short strong beak for cracking seeds, a long thin beak for sipping flower nectar, a sharp hooked beak for tearing meat, and a wide beak for scooping food from water.

🎯 Long journeys

Every year many birds migrate thousands of kilometers, leaving cold lands in winter and flying to warm places with plenty of food, then coming back in spring. Storks and swallows are migrating birds.