Essay on Birds

500 words essay on birds.

Birds are very special animals that have particular characteristics which are common amongst all of them. For instance, all of them have feathers, wings and two legs. Similarly, all birds lay eggs and are warm-blooded. They are very essential for our environment and exist in different breeds. Thus, an essay on birds will take us through their importance.

essay on birds

Importance of Birds

Birds have different sizes and can be as small as 2 inches and as big as 2.75 metres. For instance, bee hummingbird (smallest) and ostrich (largest). Bird’s existence dates back to 160 million years ago.

There are different types of birds that exist which vary in characteristics. For instance, there are penguins that cannot fly. Further, there are birds that are known for their intelligence like Parrots and Corvidae.

Moreover, we have peacocks which are beautiful and symbolize rain and good weather. Next, there are bats and vultures as well. Birds connect very closely to the environment and are quite intuitive.

They can predict the weather conditions and some are kept near coal mines for the prediction of a mine explosion. It is because they are sensitive to the release of high levels of carbon monoxide. They are quite social and enjoy singing as well. Birds enjoy the freedom of moving anywhere without boundaries.

My Favourite Bird

My favourite bird is the parrot. It is a colourful bird that is present in many parts of the world. It comes in many shapes, sizes and colours. Parrots are famous for having vivid colours.

Some have a single, bright colour while others have a rainbow of different colours. Parrots are usually small and medium in size that mostly eats seeds, nuts and fruits. The lifespan of a parrot depends on its species.

Larger ones like cockatoos and macaws live for 80 years while the smaller ones like lovebirds live for around 15 years. In fact, parrots are quite intelligent. They have the ability to imitate human speech which is why many people keep them as pets.

Consequently, they are also the most sought-after type of bird for commercial purposes. All over the world, people are taking measures to ensure parrots get nice treatment. Many cultures also consider them sacred.

Parrots are highly intelligent and thrive at their best when they are free and not captured in cages. I used to have a parrot when I was little and I never kept it in a cage. It used to sit on my shoulder wherever I went and never flew away. Parrots are my favourite bird.

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Conclusion of the Essay on Birds

Due to hunting, poaching and disruption of the ecological balance, many birds are getting extinct. As a result, birds living in water like swans, ducks and more are also falling drastically in number because of pollution. Thus, we all must take proper measures to help the birds live and save them from extinction. Birds are vital for our ecosystem and its balance, thus we must all keep them safe.

FAQ of Essay on Birds

Question 1: How can we save birds?

Answer 1: We can save birds by doing little things like providing a source of water for them to drink. Further, we can elevate bird feeders and plant native plants and trees for them. Similarly, we can put up birdhouses and garden organically so that birds can feed on insects and worms.

Question 2: Why birds are important in our life?

Answer 2 : Birds are significant for our environment as well as for human beings as they play an important role in every living thing present on earth. Birds are one of the seed dispersers for plants who deliver us food, shelter and medicines and more.

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How to Write an Essay on Birds: 9 Interesting Areas to Focus

How to Write an Essay on Birds

How to write an essay on birds? There are some interesting facts you can write about. Information about birds can be an excellent source for a creative essay. Birds are found in every part of the globe, creating a large variety of species to write about, especially when well-researched. Interesting bird facts can create wonderful topics for an essay, including unique theses that a student can explore and develop an enjoyable piece of writing.

When writing an essay about birds, it’s important to consider researching these facts, especially their biological composition. For instance, one can write an essay about birds by highlighting some distinguishing characteristics between bird species. This type of writing would be most interesting in English, particularly due to the distinctive nature of scientific descriptions. You can also include a short note about their biological differences in each section to make the essay more appealing.

Interesting Facts for Writing an Essay on Birds

Feather distinction.

One of the most interesting topics for an essay on birds is their feather diversity. Birds have distinctive appearances in structure, order, and color. Feather distinction is one of the distinguishing characteristics between species. However, some species have different colors based on various biological and environmental factors. For instance, some bird species have distinctive differences between the feathers of a male and a female. In other cases, the differences may appear disorderly but are worth investigating.

Migration marvels and global distribution

Some bird species are migratory, traveling between regions, even continents. Since the migrations coincide with seasons, they create some migration marvels worth writing about. For instance, seagulls migrate between winter and summer, running from the cold weather. During their travels, the birds create awesome displays of their traveling routines, mating habits, and hunting traditions. This topic is most suitable for nature lovers, people willing to investigate many species for their beauty and scientific facts.

Nesting prowess

You can also write an essay on birds based on their architectural techniques. Birds build their nests differently depending on their size, primary predators, and location. While the weaverbird prefers loosely hanging tree branches, the penguin can only nest on the ground near mountains and ocean shores. The structure and composition of the nest also differ significantly, creating an array of architectural designs to compare. Any person interested in birds understands the importance of a nest, especially during mating and incubation.

information about essay bird

Egg laying facts

Birds are oviparous or egg-laying animals in English. Different species lay different egg sizes, colors, and shapes. They have distinctive characteristics based on their egg-laying habits, including location and responsibility. Some birds, such as the Cuckoo , exhibit parasitic behaviors in brooding. They lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, forcing the foster parents to incubate a foreign egg and feed an adopted chick afterward. Egg-laying habits can be quite an impressive topic for an essay on birds, especially due to the amount of scientific evidence available online.

Sociocultural rituals

Another interesting concept you can write about birds is their social lives. Like humans and any other living thing, birds socialize on different occasions. Some live in large groups, while others are loaners. However, all birds have distinctive mating rituals. Some specials engage in colorful, elaborate courtship traditions. They display marvelous moves to attract mates, using their wings and, in some cases, their avian architectural prowess to assert dominance. Birds engage in long relationships that resemble marriage in humans. The bald eagle is a good example of a bird species that marries or mates for life. The differences in sociocultural behaviors can create an amazing topic for a good essay.

Cognitive capacity

Some bird species are worth writing essays about, especially those that have shown high intelligence. Students can investigate intellectual abilities in birds to find impressive topics for their term papers and final research. You can even hire an experienced academic writer to help with the information gathering and drafting. For instance, CustomWritings professional essay writing service is a prominent helper with over ten years of experience supporting students’ journeys. While intelligent avian is attractive, finding accurate and reliable supporting evidence on such a topic can be daunting. With professional assistance, you can access scholarly articles and integrate findings from research in your essay on birds.

Vocal abilities

Birds are also known for their vocalization capabilities. While students cannot transcribe bird songs into writing, investigations into singing abilities can constitute a good essay. Most importantly, one can research birds’ ability to vocalize or mimic different sounds. Some bird species are known for their vocalization, especially when imitating humans and other birds. Others can produce relatively unique sounds, making them an attractive piece of marvel for analysis.

Scholars and researchers tend to focus on the biological differences between birds. Notably, biologists have invested significantly in understanding the genetic differences for classification and knowledge gathering. With this information, students can develop exciting topics for their essays or end-term research papers. Another interesting point of focus is the survival instincts and abilities of birds. While some species rely on camouflage for safety, others are birds of prey. The details about each bird’s genetics can help explain distribution and preferences.

Life expectancy

Similarly, the biological differences explain the differences in life expectancy. It’s difficult to ascertain the length of life in wild birds due to constant migration. However, scientific evidence suggests that some birds live longer than others. A good essay writer would consider analyzing the reasoning behind these differences and identify genetic and environmental characteristics affecting the length of life.

How Do I Write an Essay on Birds?

The best approach for writing an essay on birds involves conducting sufficient research. A good student would start by identifying an interesting fact to write about birds and research it. The information gathered from the knowledge search can then be used to create a comprehensive essay topic with a compelling thesis. The interesting facts about birds can also be a good hook for the introduction. The essay on birds should be organized professionally, adopting a basic paper structure with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Writing an essay on birds should also incorporate scientific and scholarly evidence. A good writer understands the need to integrate external sources with supporting and counterarguments. This approach will make your essay more interesting to read and easy to grade. Your professor may be impressed by your capacity to research a wild topic and investigate evidence found in scholarly works. Besides, supporting your arguments with reliable and verifiable arguments makes your writing believable. You can also impress the reader with ideas corroborating your knowledge of birds. For instance, you can integrate information about mating in an essay about birds’ vocal abilities to demonstrate a connection between the two issues. In the end, your essay about birds should be compelling and informative.

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Essay on Birds

Birds are exceptionally unique creatures with distinctive traits that they all share. For instance, they all have two legs, wings, and feathers. In a similar vein, all birds have warm blood and lay eggs. They come in several breeds and are highly important to our ecology. Here are a few sample essays on the topic ‘Birds’.

Essay on Birds

100 Words Essay On Birds

Birds are the only vertebrates with feathers, making them a form of a vertebrate with a backbone. They can keep their body temperature constant regardless of the temperature of their environment because they have warm blood.

Birds can consume insects and other small creatures with the help of their beaks. Some birds, like parrots, can grab fruit or nuts with their beaks. Most birds construct nests in which they lay their eggs and live in flocks (in groups).

Birds are intriguing animals that have a lot to teach us about nature. We may learn about the ecology of our mother earth and the significance of protecting the environment by studying them.

200 words Essay on Birds

The field of ornithology, the study of birds, is so vast that it is impossible even to guess the number of distinct species of birds that exist worldwide. There are about 10,000 different species of birds around the globe. Scientists believe there may be even more out there that is still unidentified or undiscovered.

Birds are present on every continent and in every environment, from the Arctic to the tropics. They have a wide range of stunning colours. Common bird species include chickens, ducks, hawks, eagles, finches, sparrows, and crows. While each bird has unique characteristics, all birds share some common characteristics.

As an illustration, every bird has feathers and can fly (except a few bird species that have lost this ability). Their ability to fly, made possible by their wings, is one trait that sets them apart from other creatures.

A bird is an omnivore since it frequently eats both plants and animals. Birds eat a variety of foods, depending on their species. Hummingbirds, for example, eat on floral nectar. Vultures and other birds eat decaying meat, and the crow will eat almost anything. Additionally, we have peacocks, which are lovely and represent rain and fine weather. Birds have a strong sense of intuition and connection to their surroundings.

500 Words Essay On Birds

Birds are essential to the environment and humans because they support every living creature on Earth. They are among the people spreading the seeds of the plants that give us food, shelter, and medicines. They also transport the plants to new islands in addition to restoring the environment that has been devastated. Earth’s ecosystem balance would be disrupted if birds were to go extinct. Because birds consume insects, they are also known as environment cleaners.

For example, vultures devour decaying bodies, which can affect the environment. Without birds, the population of insects will soar quickly. But today, birds are going extinct due to deforestation—because birds depend on trees for their habitat and food. Thus, they must reside in regions humans have created, which causes a decline in bird species.

Interesting Facts About Birds

Birds can be as small as 2 inches or as large as 2.75 metres—the ostrich, for instance, and the bee, the smallest hummer (most prominent). The existence of birds dates back 160 million years.

Birds come in many different varieties, each with its unique qualities. As an illustration, certain penguins cannot fly. Other birds with a reputation for intelligence include parrots and Corvidae.

We also have beautiful peacocks that stand in for rain and good weather. Then there are the bats and the vultures. Birds are highly intuitive and highly connected to their environment.

Some of them are kept near coal mines so they can foresee mine explosions and weather conditions. They are sensitive to high carbon monoxide release, which is why. They enjoy singing and are friendly people. Birds enjoy having unrestricted, unhindered flight.

My Favourite Bird

Birds have always piqued my interest. I spent hours watching them fly and play in the park close to my house when I was younger. The parrot is one of my favourite birds. I even kept a parrot as a pet for a while named Barry. I never kept Barry in a cage. It used to sit on my shoulder everywhere I went and never flew off. I used to feed him and play with him a lot. He had beautiful feathers.

Parrots are vibrant birds that may be seen all over the world. It comes in a variety of forms, dimensions, and hues. Vibrant colours are a common characteristic of parrots.

While some have a single, vivid colour, others have a spectrum of hues. Parrots typically range in size from small to medium, and they prefer to consume seeds, nuts, and fruits. A parrot's lifespan is determined by its species.

Lovebirds, smaller than cockatoos and macaws, only survive for about 15 years on average. Parrots are intelligent. They can mimic human speech, so many people keep them as pets.

As a result, they are the most sought-after species of bird for trade. People are trying to guarantee that parrots receive good care throughout the world. They are regarded as sacred in many civilisations. Since they are knowledgeable, parrots do best when living in the wild without being kept in cages.

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Friday essay: on birds — feathered messengers from deep time

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Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, UTS, University of Technology Sydney

Disclosure statement

Delia Falconer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Technology Sydney provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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When I experienced a great loss in in my early forties — almost a year to the day after another — I went to see my mother in the family home. She wasn’t a hugger or giver of advice, so instead we fed the birds. As she had when I was a child, she stood behind me in the kitchen with her shoulder propped against the back door, passing slices of apple and small balls of minced meat into my hand.

Each bird, apart from the snatching kookaburras, was touchingly gentle in the way it took food from my fingers. The white cockatoos ate daintily, one-legged. The lorikeets jumped onto the sloping ramp on both feet, like eager parachutists, to quarrel over the apple and press the juice from the pulp with stubby tongues.

Lined up on the veranda rail, the magpies cocked their heads to observe me before accepting meat precisely in their blue-white beaks. They had a beautiful, carolling song, with a chorded quality in the falling registers. But the bright-eyed butcher birds had the most lovely song of all: a full-throated piping, which I’ve heard compared to the Queen of the Night’s aria in Mozart’s Magic Flute.

Over decades, a family of these little blue-grey birds, had come to stack their hooked meat-eaters’ beaks with mince, which they flew to deliver to young somewhere in our neighbour’s garden, though we had never bothered to try to work out where they lived. This afternoon, when my mother and I opened the door, they landed by our side as they always had, having spotted us from their watching places. For a brief moment, surrounded by these vital creatures, I felt as if I might still want to be alive.

Small agents

Birds have always been small agents charged with carrying the burden of our feelings simply by following the logic of their own existence. The Irish imagined puffins as the souls of priests. The ancient Romans released an eagle when an emperor died in the belief it would “conduct his soul aloft”. In the Abrahamic religions, doves are given powers of revelation. We have even been inclined, right up until the present, to imagine birds as the souls of our recently departed returned to us, if only for a moment.

information about essay bird

Even without being recruited into such labour, birds touch on our lives in small but significant ways. Once, in the botanical gardens of Melbourne, a boyfriend laughed until he almost cried at the mechanical, eager hopping of the tiny fairy wrens, a fact that only made me like him more. A friend tells the story of her uncle who ordered quail for the first time at a restaurant and cried when he saw it on his plate. “She had a raven’s heart, small and obdurate,” American author Don DeLillo writes of a nun in Underworld ; it is my favourite description in any novel.

In Japan, where my partner and I tried to ease our sadness, the calls of crows were ubiquitous in every town. Like the low sounds of its deer, they had a subdued, almost exhausted quality, as hollow as the bells that are rattled to call the oldest spirits to its Shinto temples.

In 1975, when his first wife left him, Masahise Fukase began to photograph these birds, which he had seen from the window of a train. He would keep taking their pictures – on a hilltop tori at dusk, grouped on the budding branches of a bare tree, in flying silhouette – for ten years. Ravens would become one of the most famous books of modern photography , hailed as a “masterpiece of mourning”. While some people see the birds in his photos as symbols of loneliness I see them as embodiments of pure intention. “I work and photograph to stop everything,” Fukase said. As if fulfilling a prophecy, he would spend the last two decades of his life in a coma, after falling down the stairs at his favourite bar.

Yet for all our emotional investment in them, we’ve never treated birds particularly well. To train a falcon in Qatar, owners sew the young bird’s eyes shut, unstitching and then restitching them for longer intervals, until it is entirely dependent on its keeper. In Asia the appetite for caged songbirds is so great that their calls are disappearing from its forests. Our careless acceptance that these extraordinary creatures are subject to our will is perhaps as damning as any direct mistreatment of them. This is symbolised for me by that fact that, in North America, owners of long pipelines add a putrid odorant to the natural gas they carry so that turkey vultures, circling over the deathly smell, will alert them to methane leaks.

We are currently draining marshes globally three times faster than we are clearing forests. Migratory Red Knots fly 15,000 kilometres per year between Australia and their breeding grounds in the Arctic Tundra, but they’re declining because of the industrial development of the Yellow Sea’s tidal mudflats, where they stop to feed and rest. One of the details that most haunted me in the reports of Australia’s mega-fires was the fact that many birds that survived the radiant heat would die of smoke inhalation because the continuous one-way airflow of their breathing systems and air sacs meant they couldn’t cough to clear their lungs.

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When we first moved into my childhood home, wattlebirds fed in the grevilleas, calling from the rockery with voices that sounded, as a poet once said to me, like the cork being pulled from a bottle of champagne. While their long forms ending in a slim, curved beak seemed the embodiment of alertness, they were the birds our cat caught most often. To see one, rescued but internally injured, vomit up its honey and grow limp was one of my first intimations as a child of the world’s evils. Unable to bear the thought of their sleek, streaky bodies in the bare earth, my mother would bury them wrapped in tea towels. But it was the 70s and no one thought to keep the cat inside.

As my mother entered her nineties, her life contracted around her birds. Although experts were now advising that the lack of calcium could soften chicks’ bones, I continued, against my conscience, to put through her weekly grocery order, which contained as much bird mince as food for herself. She had stopped feeding the cockatoos, which had chewed her windowsills and the struts of the back door, but when they heard us in the kitchen they would still plaster their chests like great white flowers against the window or poke their heads through the large holes they’d made over the years in the door’s wire fly screen.

But it was only the butcher birds that ever entered through these gaps to wait for her by the sink, feathers fluffed calmly. Once or twice, one would come and find her in the dining room and quietly walk back ahead of her to be fed. When I came with the children, she would press food into their hands as she stood behind them at the door, leaning against the kitchen counter for support. So she continued to be one of the estimated 30 to 60% of Australian households that fed wild birds, a statistic that suggests that we need them far more than they need us.

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Scientists began to think in the 19th century that birds might have evolved from dinosaurs, when the 150-million- year-old fossil skeleton of Archaeopteryx — which we now know was capable of short bursts of active flight — turned up in a German quarry.

The Victorian biologist Thomas Henry Huxley observed the bony-tailed, feathered fossil’s striking resemblance to small dinosaurs like Compsognathus and proposed that it was a transitional form between flightless reptiles and birds. Huxley’s theory fell out of favour until the last decades of the 20th century, when a new generation of palaeontologists returned to the similarities between the metabolisms and bird-like structures of dinosaur fossils and birds, and there is now a consensus that birds are avian dinosaurs. That the birds with which we share our lives are the descendants of the hollow-tailed, meat-eating theropods is a true wonder that never fails to thrill me.

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Birds, like us, are survivors. They escaped the Cretaceous-Paleogene (or K-Pg) mass extinction event 65 million years ago: the fifth and last great dying in the history of our planet, until the Sixth Extinction taking place around us now.

Scientists were able to work out, from unusually high deposits of rare iridium (which mostly comes from outer space) in the Earth’s crust that a ten-kilometre-wide asteroid hitting the area that is now Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula had killed off three quarters of the world’s living creatures by causing forest fires and then a freezing “nuclear winter,” which inhibited photosynthesis and rapidly acidified the oceans. Its blast was thousands of times more powerful than the combined force of all the nuclear weapons in the world today. The dust and debris it dispersed into the atmosphere eventually settled into a thin grey band of iridium-rich clay, which came to be called the K-Pg boundary and, above it, no trace of a non-avian dinosaur can be found.

In historical ironies whose obviousness would shame a novelist, it was geophysicists looking for petroleum in the 1970s who would discover the existence of the Chicxulub crater. Walter Alvarez, who discovered the “iridium anomaly”, was the son of physicist Luis Alvarez, a designer of America’s nuclear bombs, with whom he posited the asteroid strike theory; Alvarez senior had followed in a plane behind the Enola Gay to measure the blast effect as it dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima.

The ground-dwelling, beaked avian dinosaurs were able to scratch out a life for themselves in the ferny “disaster flora” that replaced the obliterated forests; their intelligence, their feathery insulation, their ability to feed on the destroyed forests’ seeds, and to digest the “hard, persistent little morsels” as one writer puts it, would help them to survive, and later flourish.

More incredibly, these dinosaurs were already recognisably bird-like, inside and out; capable of at least short horizontal flight like quails, the parts of their brains that controlled sight, flight and high-level memory as expanded as those of modern birds’, while our early mammal ancestors — small, nocturnal, insectivorous, shrew-like mammals — were hiding in clefts and caves.

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It is now thought that the world’s oldest modern bird, Asteriornis maastrichtensis , could probably fly and was combing the shallow beaches of today’s Belgium, in the way of modern long-legged shore birds, 700,000 years before the K-Pg mass extinction.

Because of a wealth of new fossil evidence in China, we now also know that feathers are far more ancient than we once thought; they didn’t evolve with birds 150 million years ago but are instead probably as old as dinosaurs themselves. In fact, many of the dinosaurs that we have been trained to think of as scaly, were at least partially feathered, including the fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex , which may have used its primitive feathers, like a peacock, for display.

Powerful electron microscopes have allowed scientists to determine that the long filaments covering 150-million-year-old Sinosauropteryx , the first feathered non-avian dinosaur discovered, in China, in 1996, were “proto-feathers”; and even, looking at the melanosomes inside them, that they were ginger, running in a “Mohican” pattern down its back and ending in a stripey white-and-ginger tail. Similar examination of the melanosomes of another Jurassic-era theropod found that it had a grey-and-dark plumage on its body, long white and black-spangled forelimbs, and a reddish-brown, fluffy crown.

Scientists are puzzled about what dinosaurs’ feathers, which developed before the capacity of feathered flight, were “for”, but I don’t really care: the fact of them is startling enough, along with the imaginative readjustments we have to make in seeing the fearsome creatures of paleoart that we grew up with, locked in orgasmic conflict, as softly plumaged. Did their young call for them with the same open-mouthed yearning as baby birds, I wonder? Did they possess their own sense of beauty? If we imagine dinosaurs as being less alien and fluffier, does it make our own era’s potential annihilation seem more real?

Read more: Meet the prehistoric eagle that ruled Australian forests 25 million years ago

Over the last century folkorists and psychoanalysts have kept trying to account for birds’ deep hold over our imaginations; as agents of death, prophets, ferriers of souls, omens, and symbols of renewal and productivity. Some attribute it to the power of flight and their ability to inhabit the heavens, others to the way eggs embody transformation. But could it be that the vestigial shrew-like part of ourselves has always recognised them instinctively as the emissaries of a deep past, much older than we are? “We float on a bubble of space-time,” writes author Verlyn Klinkenberg , “on the surface of an ocean of deep time”.

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Recently, this deep past has begun to reassert itself as, even during coronavirus lockdowns, burned fossil fuels continue to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, bringing its concentration in the air to levels not seen since the Pliocene three million years ago when the seas were 30 metres higher. To try to help us understand the literal profundity of this moment in the history of the earth, writers have been looking increasingly below its surface, far beyond the human realm, to its deepest, billions-of-years-old strata.

In his astonishing Underland , English writer Robert Macfarlane travels physically far underground into caves, mines, and nuclear waste bunkers, to revive our ancient sense of awe as forces and substances once thought safely confined there begin to exert themselves above ground, but also to convey the enormity of the long shadow we will cast into the future of a planet that has already seen periods of great transformation.

In Timefulness , geologist Marcia Bjornerud argues that understanding the Earth through her discipline’s vastly expanded time-scales can help us avoid the almost unthinkably grave consequences of our actions. We live in an era of time denial, she writes, while navigating towards the future with conceptions of the long patterns of planetary history as primitive as a 14th-century world map. And yet, she writes, “as a daughter, mother, and widow, I struggle like everyone else to look Time honestly in the face.”

Yet here, I think, all around us on the surface of the planet, are our vivacious and inscrutable companions, feathered messengers from deep time, who still tell their own story of complex change.

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What lives and dies

At a writer’s festival in northern New South Wales, I remember, a magpie lark landed between the chair and speaker on stage to let forth a cascade of liquid notes, “as if, to say,” a droll friend sitting next to me said, “I too have something to contribute!” while I found myself wondering, yet again, how something with such a small heart could be so alive.

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To think about dinosaurs, as evolutionary biologist Steven Brusatte writes , is to confront the question of what lives and what dies. To think that dinosaurs were far more complex than we imagined, Klinkenberg muses, interrupts the chain of consequence we’ve been carrying in our heads, which assumes that deep time’s purpose was to lead to us as the end point of evolution. The history of feathers and wings, in which the power of flight appears to have been discovered and lost at least three times, shows that evolution is not a tree, but a clumped bush. And yet, Klinkenberg writes, “Because we come after, it’s easy to suppose we must be the purpose of what came before.”

The same could be said of mothers. When the time came to choose the photographs for my mother’s funeral, the images of her as a child in Mexico and Canada seemed as unreal as dispatches from the moon. The photographs of our mothers as young girls are so affecting a friend wrote to me, because they show them living lives that were whole without us. Now my own children turn their heads away from pictures of me as a girl, because, they say, “You don’t look like you.” And yet, if our minds struggle to encompass the deep time of our mothers, I think, how can they hope to stretch across aeons?

On my last visit to my mother, I left her on her front step throwing meat to the two magpies which had learned to come around from the backyard, away from the other birds, and would follow her on stilted legs around the garden. When she pressed her emergency pendant the next morning, I missed her call; it was my partner, hearing her faint answers, who called the ambulance. Unconscious in the hospital, she died having never known that she had left her home. When I stopped back at the house afterwards, one of the butcher birds, which I had never seen around the front, was on the windowsill of her dark bedroom, break pressed against the glass, looking for her.

This is an extract from Signs and Wonders: Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss by Delia Falconer, published by Simon and Schuster.

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Essay On Birds

500+ words essay on birds, their characteristics and how they’re important for the environment.

Of all animals in the world, birds are one of the most fascinating creatures. These winged animals can walk on the ground and even fly high in the skies. The wings, the hundreds of feathers that cover their bodies and their hollow bones are what helps them lift their bodies and fly. But not all birds can fly, birds like ostriches and penguins are flightless birds. 

There are thousands of species of birds on Earth and each of them is unique. Most of them are herbivorous, but a few species of birds are carnivorous. For example, kites, vultures, hawks, eagles etc are called birds of prey because they eat other animals.

Birds are extremely important for our environment. From pollination to keeping the earth clean and even predicting weather conditions, birds are extremely useful. In this essay on birds, learn about the characteristics of birds and how they’re vital to our ecosystem and it’s balance.

Essay On Birds: Characteristics Of Birds

Here are 5 major characteristics of birds:

  • Wings: Wings are what differentiate birds from other animals. These wings are what help the birds fly. But not all birds have wings. Some birds like penguins have flippers, which helps them swim.
  • Feathers: Feathers are another defining feature of birds, which separate them from other animals. Feathers help birds fly and also keep them warm and protect them against the elements.
  • Beak or bill:  All birds have a beak or a bill, which is a bony projection on their faces. These beaks or bills are the entry to a bird’s mouth. Different species of birds have different kinds of beaks or bills depending on their diet. For example, predatory birds like hawks and eagles have sharp, hooked beaks, which helps in tearing and ripping meat. Birds with cone shaped beaks help them break the shells of nuts and seeds to eat them. Aquatic birds like ducks and geese have bills, which help them strain food from the water. Some birds like hummingbirds have a sharp needle-like beak that helps them suck nectar from flowers.
  • Skeleton: Another distinguishing feature of birds is their hollow and lightweight but strong skeleton. This is what helps the bird lift itself off the ground and fly into the sky. But this differs in flightless birds. Penguins have large, marrow-filled bones and fat, which protects them against the cold in their frozen habitat. Ostriches have heavy, solid bones and muscles in their legs, which gives them the strength to run at high speeds and kick powerfully. 
  • Eggs: Another distinctive feature of birds is that they give birth to their young ones by laying and hatching eggs. Most birds construct nests to lay and hatch their eggs and care for their hatchlings.

Now that you know the different characteristics of birds, read on to learn about the importance of birds for our environment in this essay on birds.

Also explore: Essay on animals and Essay on Zoo .

Essay On Birds: The Importance Of Birds

Birds are an important part of our environment and food chain, they’re vital to maintain a balance in the ecosystem. In fact, sometimes we need birds more than they need us.

  • Pollination and Seed Dispersion: Birds are extremely important for pollination and dispersing seeds. This helps more plants grow. Additionally, bird droppings also add more nutrients to the soil, so they’re important for soil fertility too.
  • Balance the food chain: Carnivorous birds eat pests and rodents like mice, rats, snakes etc. This keeps a check on rodent population and helps in pest control. Birds that eat carrion help keep the environment clean of decaying matter.
  • Predicting weather: Birds are very intuitive creatures. They’re very sensitive to changes in weather and can sense high levels of carbon monoxide. So, they are often used to predict explosions in coal mines.

Sadly, these beautiful creatures are in danger. The greed of humans, climate change and pollution pose a threat to these fascinating creatures. We need to ensure that the species survives to keep the ecosystem from falling apart.

We hope you found this essay on birds helpful. For more such essays on different topics, check Osmo’s essays for kids .

Frequently Asked Questions On Birds

What are the characteristics that distinguish birds from other animals.

The characteristics that distinguish birds from other animals are their wings, feathers, beaks or bills and their lightweight and hollow skeleton.

How are birds important to the environment?

Birds are important for dispersing seeds and pollination, pest control, balancing the food chain and predicting the weather.

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Essay on Birds 200+ Words

Birds are incredible creatures that grace our skies and forests, adding beauty, diversity, and significance to our world. In this essay, we will explore the marvelous world of birds, their importance in our ecosystem, and the fascinating aspects of their lives.

A World of Diversity

Birds come in an astonishing array of shapes, sizes, and colors. From the majestic bald eagle soaring high to the tiny hummingbird flitting about flowers, there’s a bird for every environment. In fact, there are over 10,000 different species of birds worldwide, each with its unique characteristics.

The Power of Flight

One of the most remarkable features of birds is their ability to fly. Their wings allow them to navigate the skies effortlessly. Birds have fascinated scientists for centuries, and their aerodynamic designs have inspired innovations in aviation. Leonardo da Vinci, a brilliant inventor, studied bird flight to create his flying machine designs.

Environmental Indicators

Birds serve as important indicators of the health of our environment. They are highly sensitive to changes in their surroundings. Ornithologists, scientists who study birds, often use bird populations as indicators of environmental changes. A decline in certain bird species can signal problems like pollution or habitat destruction.

Ecosystem Engineers

Birds play vital roles in ecosystems by acting as “ecosystem engineers.” For example, woodpeckers create holes in trees that later become homes for other animals. Birds also help control insect populations by feeding on them. In this way, they help maintain the delicate balance of nature.

Seed Dispersers

Many birds are essential for spreading seeds. When birds eat fruits and then travel to other locations, they help plants spread and grow in new areas. This process, known as seed dispersal, is crucial for the survival of various plant species.

Songbirds and Their Melodies

Songbirds are famous for their melodious tunes. They communicate, find mates, and establish territories through their songs. Ornithologists have discovered that some birds, like the nightingale, have incredibly complex songs, with each note having a specific purpose.

Migration Marvels

Birds embark on incredible journeys during migration. They fly thousands of miles to find food, avoid harsh weather, or breed in suitable areas. For example, the Arctic Tern holds the record for the longest annual migration, traveling from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back.

Birds as Inspirations

Birds have been a source of inspiration for humans throughout history. Their grace and beauty have inspired countless works of art, literature, and poetry. Famous painters like John James Audubon dedicated their lives to depicting the beauty of birds in their natural habitats.

Birds and Biodiversity

Birds are an essential part of Earth’s biodiversity. They contribute to the interconnected web of life, where every species plays a role. When we protect birds and their habitats, we also protect countless other species and the overall health of our planet.

Conclusion of Essay on Birds

In conclusion, birds are more than just creatures that fill our skies and forests. They are diverse, adaptable, and vital to the balance of nature. Birds’ ability to fly, their environmental significance, and their cultural and artistic inspiration make them truly remarkable. It is our responsibility to appreciate, protect, and conserve these feathered marvels and ensure that they continue to enrich our world for generations to come. Birds are not just a part of nature; they are a part of our shared human heritage, reminding us of the wonders of the natural world.

Also Check: List of 500+ Topics for Writing Essay

Essay on Birds for Students and Children in 1000+ Words

Essay on Birds for Students and Children in 1000+ Words

In this article, you will read an Essay on Birds for students and children in 1000+ words. It includes nature, living situation, voices, habitats, importance and 10 lines about birds.

So, let’s start this essay on birds…

Table of Contents

Introduction (Essay on Birds)

Birds are the unique creature that has the ability of flying. If they fly and spread wings in the sky, then an attractive scene is present.

In the morning and evening, the earth gets resonated with their killer. The beauty of forest-provinces is enhanced by their residence. Everyone is fascinated by their attractive colours.

Nature of Birds

Birds are very strange. Some black, some green and some purple. Their body is very light because of which they can fly easily. Their wings are light and colourful. They have two legs and two eyes.

With the help of the feet, they roam the earth . Some birds fly in the sky at very high altitudes, and some can decide only two-four feet distance.

Just as there are many types of variations found in the world, in the bird world also, many types of variations are found. But two characteristics are the same in all – one can fly, and the other is that all birds lay eggs.

Living Situation of Birds

Birds are deeply attached to nature . They live in forests, nesting in bushes and on trees. Most birds live in a shelter that it creates.

Collected the weeds, added the straw, and made a nest. Some birds are very skilled at building a nest, such bird’s know as nesting birds. They make it on sight.

Some birds do not make a nest and make a shelter in a tree cover. The woodpecker makes holes in the wood. Some large birds, such as peacocks , do not build nests and take refuge in bushes.

Voices of Birds

The soft tone of some birds attracts us. Cuckoo, papaya, parrot, etc. are all convincing of the melodious sound of birds. There is a great discussion of his voice in literature.

He has great praise in the compositions of poets. But the dialect of some birds is considered hoarse. It has also been said that who does the cuckoo give and what does the crow take, but everyone dislikes it because of the ravenous bird of the crow.

In this way, the birds want to be free, but some birds are kept domestic by humans. Birds like pigeon, parrot , a rooster can be domesticated. The parrot is ensconced in many houses and can mimic the voice of a man.

It is kept in a cage and is known and considered a special symbol of peace. Rooster is very important from a commercial point of view. We obtain eggs and meat from them.

Eating Habits of Birds

Eagle, crow, heron, rooster, etc, are some birds that eat the flesh of dead or living animals. Some birds sit on the bodies of living beings like cows , buffaloes, and eat the parasites present on their bodies.

Carnivorous birds fill their stomachs by eating meat, fish, and insects. Their activities keep the balance of the environment on the earth. Many birds are herbivores. Vegetarian birds eat cereal grains, fruits, legumes, and vegetables.

Some birds live in inaccessible places. Penguin is one such bird. It can also survive in icy places in the Polar Regions. Some birds live in water. Cranes, heron, swan, watercourse, etc. are such birds. They can prey on the water for fishes and other small creatures on earth.

National Bird of India

Peacock is known as the national bird of our country, India. The wings of Peacock are colourful. It dances gracefully by spreading its wings. Various types of decorative items are made from their wings. It is a very adventurous bird. It defeats snakes in battle.

Importance of Birds

Keeping the environmental balance in mind, if birds have great significance in human life. Flying in the sky, these birds are very natural means of cleaning the environment. … How many animal birds is there that protect the flora useful for human life by eating insect germs and polluted things ?

Birds like heron, goose, and duck swim on the water and feed on the fish. A stork is a migratory bird that migrates according to the seasons. Birds also fly in the sky, run on the ground, and also swim on the water. Birds are also the identity of a nation.

Same as the national bird of India is a peacock, the Kiwi is recognised as the national bird of New Zealand. Some birds are in a particular country. The Kiwi bird is found only in New Zealand.

Humans have shared borders, but there is no border for birds. Birds can be allowed in any country of the world without permission. This entire world belongs to him, where a man cut trees in his greed.

The tree is a habitat for birds, and so it is our responsibility to protect the habitat of birds. Many birds are rare, which are going extinct. Birds are essential for life on Earth.

10 Lines on Birds

  • The survival or disappearance of animal birds is very harmful to humans.
  • Birds protect flora useful for human life by eating polluted items.
  • The number of the human race has increased, and the number of animal birds is decreasing day by day.
  • Flying in the sky, these birds are very natural means of cleaning the environment.
  • Birds continue to eradicate the rotting objects lying in the piles of garbage.
  • One should make the utmost effort to protect them at every level.
  • Birds which are necessary for our environment. Their number is continuously decreasing.
  • In this age of today, it has become difficult to spend a life of birds.
  • There are many such birds, those who live their rain in the fields.
  • To protect the birds from extinction, we should plant more and more plants.

Birds are an integral part of our environment. But because of poaching and dwindling forest area, some birds are in trouble. Some of these are becoming rare.

The government has enacted the Wildlife Act and sanctuaries for their safe abode. People should make reasonable efforts to save rare birds. I hope you liked this lovely essay on birds.

Thanks for reading.

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Essay on birds

Essay on Birds 3 Models

Essay on birds is interesting because it deals with the life of birds in detail. Several examples such as a short essay on types of birds, a paragraph on raising birds at home, the economic value of keeping birds, names of some birds of prey, how to take care of domestic birds, how birds take care of their young, and what is the largest bird.

Information about birds that benefit all students, the food of birds, their reproduction, in addition to the migration of birds, why do birds migrate from their home to another place that may be thousands of kilometers away from their original home.

Essay on birds is a sample topic for fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students, and first, second, and third grade students of middle school and high school.

Essay on birds

Birds are beautiful creatures, which is why all children love them. There are many types of birds, which we will mention in the essay on birds, and the forms of birds differ in terms of size, color, and the way nests are built.

All birds are characterized by beauty and bright colors, in addition to the softness of their feathers. Some birds are able to fly very long distances, even crossing the ocean during their migration without resting. Among the few species that cannot fly at all are penguins and ostriches.

Birds are vertebrates, and they are among the most diverse organisms, with approximately 10,000 species. Birds live in a variety of environments, where they live in mountainous areas, deserts, forests and farms, fields, gardens, cities and homes. That is, they live in diverse environments.

Supernatural qualities distinguish some birds

  • Voice: God distinguished some birds with amazing sounds, which musicians cannot imitate. Examples include the goldfinch and other birds with wonderful sounds, which are more beautiful than the sounds of musical instruments in their beauty. Birds use sounds and vibrations to talk to each other. These sounds are the language of the birds through which they communicate, express their fear or happiness, and other important matters for them, such as places of food, water, and expressions of feelings also during the mating seasons.
  • Feather colors: Birds are characterized by the beauty of their feathers, and its bright colors, and there is an amazing consistency between the colors of birds, which no artist can imagine, just as fashion designers cannot imitate it with the same accuracy. In the essay on birds we will show examples of birds with dazzling colors as the peacock. The male peacock is considered a beautiful painting, as it is characterized by colors and patterns that no artist can paint with such beauty. The colors of birds have many benefits, including attracting females during mating seasons, hiding from enemies, and so on.
  • The power of sight: Some birds are distinguished by the power of sight, such as the falcon, the eagle, and others. The power of sight is useful in hunting prey, as they are seen and their movements are monitored from long distances. Thus, the bird can pounce on its prey without getting away from it. Birds of prey are often distinguished by the power of sight, as they can see prey 1.5 km away.
  • The strength of the limbs: Birds are characterized by the strength of their limbs, as they carry their prey with their claws for long distances. They carry prey to the top of the trees where they build their nests, they carry prey to feed their young, so it is important that their limbs are strong. Some birds also use their legs and wings to defend themselves, or to defend the young.
  • The strength of the beak: Birds’ beaks are generally considered strong, but in birds of prey they are strong and sharp. For example, a hawk or an eagle can slaughter its prey by using the beak. It can also tear the prey into small pieces that it can eat, and the bird also uses its beak to defend itself, and the best example of the strength of the bird’s beak is the woodpecker, which can make holes in the trunks of trees with its beak, while these trees were not affected by storms or rain, and a small bird was able to make large holes in the trunk of the tree so that this hole would be its home, and the birds also feed on solid grains.
  • Sharp claws: Birds have sharp claws, and this helps them in self-defense, as well as in steadfastness on tree branches, so they do not fall while they sleep. Likewise, birds of prey catch their prey with claws, so that they cannot escape, then they also carry it with their claws and fly in the sky until they reach their nests.

Interesting information about bird life

  • Birds are social beings: Most birds live in groups, flying in flocks. Essay on birds We explain the social life of birds, where there is understanding and cooperation between a group of birds, and they support each other. We also see the family bonding between birds, where both the male and the female participate in building the nest, incubating the eggs, feeding the young and defending them. The role played by the male or female varies depending on the type of bird. There are birds in which the male is in charge of preparing the nest, and in other birds the female is in charge of preparing the nest. Sometimes both the male and the female participate in preparing the nest. There are also birds, the male is associated with only one female throughout his life, and the birds grieve when they die or lose one of the spouses or one of the children, they have feelings of love and compassion.
  • Birds lay eggs: the size and color of eggs varies from one bird to another. The ostrich egg is the largest egg, while the smallest egg is the eggs of some types of small birds. Bird eggs are characterized by the strength and hardness of their shell to suit environmental conditions. The male and female exchange incubating the eggs until the young hatch, and in most cases the incubation period for eggs may reach 21 days, as in chickens, or 30 days, as in ducks, geese, and others.
  • The body of birds is lightweight: light weight helps them to fly. In the essay on birds, we will explain this, as birds have a lightweight body, and a streamlined shape that helps them fly. Birds were the source of inspiration for humans in the manufacture of aircraft, scientists have studied the physical characteristics of birds so that they can make aircraft. Its streamlined shape also helps it dive into the water and catch fish.
  • Feathers are soft and shiny: There is no doubt that bird feathers are the source of their beauty, but they also have other benefits, such as protecting the flying body from direct shocks, helping the bird to fly, protecting the bird from weather fluctuations, especially as it protects the bird from rainwater, as rainwater slips on the feathers and does not reach the body of the bird.

Benefits of birds

  • Birds play an essential role in maintaining the ecological balance. Some birds feed on insects, such as the Cattle egrets bird, which works to clean the soil which make the agricultural plants free from parasites and harmful insects, in addition to aerating the agricultural soil, and this helps in improving agricultural production.
  • Birds are an important source of white meat, and bird meat is more beneficial than the meat of other animals such as cows, buffaloes, and sheep, and therefore it is preferred by most people.
  • Bird meat is an important source of proteins that we need for the growth of the body and strengthening the immune system. Bird meat is also characterized by its delicious taste.
  • Pillows are made from the feathers of some birds, and for example, ostrich feathers, from which comfortable pillows are made, and therefore they are sold at very high prices.
  • Birds carry pollen from one tree to another, and this helps trees pollinate naturally without human intervention. This helps to increase the production of fruits such as fruits and others.

The economic importance of birds

We cannot neglect to talk about the economic value of birds. We will mention the importance of expanding bird breeding in the essay on birds, especially poultry farms, which have become widespread in all countries of the world. Poultry farming has become an important industry with high economic value.

Man has been able to develop this vital industry, so that it produces the largest quantity of poultry, in order to meet human needs. There are modern ways to raise poultry, as it provides medical care for poultry, as well as the quality of food, setting the appropriate temperature inside farms and other things that help achieve good profits from poultry farming.

At the end of the essay on birds, interesting information about the life of birds, miraculous qualities that distinguish some birds, and the economic importance of birds have been presented.

It is important to realize that birds are social beings, and they have feelings like us, and they express their feelings by issuing certain sounds, and they grieve at the death of one of the spouses, so that they also become depressed and may die of grief.

Therefore, we must treat birds gently, and provide them with the necessary health care, and you can seek the help of a veterinarian to learn how to properly raise birds.

I hope you benefited from the essay on birds, and I would love to receive your comments.

To read more, click on the following link:

  • Essay on if i were a bird
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Writing Beginner

How to Describe Birds in Writing (17 Best Tips & Examples)

Let’s spread our creative wings together and explore the art of describing birds in our writing.

Here is how to describe birds in writing:

Describe birds in writing by focusing on their feathers, songs, movements, and behaviors. Use vivid words like “iridescent” or phrases like “wings slicing the air”. Employ sensory descriptions, symbolic meanings, and cultural contexts to bring avian characters to life in your narratives.

Keep reading to learn everything you need to know to write about birds in your stories.

Types of Birds in Writing

Colorful parrot image for a blog post about how to describe birds in writing

Table of Contents

Birds, with their vast diversity and striking characteristics, offer a rich palette for writers to paint vibrant scenes and convey emotions.

From tiny, flitting hummingbirds to majestic eagles soaring high, each bird carries its own symbolism and narrative potential.

In this section, we’ll explore a variety of bird types, each with a brief description that captures their essence, providing a broad canvas for writers to draw inspiration from.

  • Sparrows – Small and unassuming, sparrows symbolize simplicity and the joy found in everyday life.
  • Eagles – Majestic and powerful, eagles are often used to depict freedom, strength, and a bird’s-eye perspective on life.
  • Hummingbirds – Tiny and energetic, hummingbirds represent joy, agility, and the incredible beauty of small things.
  • Owls – Mysterious and wise, owls often symbolize knowledge, the unseen, and the secrets of the night.
  • Robins – Cheerful and common, robins are harbingers of spring and symbols of renewal and new beginnings.
  • Peacocks – Vibrant and flamboyant, peacocks epitomize beauty, pride, and the splendor of nature.
  • Crows – Intelligent and adaptable, crows often represent transformation, adaptability, and the mysteries of life.
  • Pigeons – Ubiquitous and resilient, pigeons are seen as symbols of peace, love, and the persistence of life in urban landscapes.
  • Swans – Graceful and elegant, swans are often used to represent love, purity, and the beauty of monogamy.
  • Canaries – Bright and vocal, canaries symbolize happiness, the power of voice, and sometimes, a warning.
  • Penguins – Endearing and unique, penguins represent adaptability, survival, and the joys of companionship.
  • Flamingos – Striking and social, flamingos symbolize balance, community, and embracing one’s uniqueness.
  • Parrots – Colorful and vocal, parrots often stand for communication, mimicry, and the vibrancy of the tropics.
  • Vultures – Misunderstood scavengers, vultures symbolize cleansing, renewal, and the cycle of life.
  • Doves – Gentle and serene, doves are universally recognized as emblems of peace, hope, and spiritual messengers.
  • Hawks – Focused and fierce, hawks represent vision, power, and the ability to navigate life’s challenges.
  • Seagulls – Noisy and free-spirited, seagulls embody the spirit of the sea, freedom, and a carefree lifestyle.
  • Woodpeckers – Persistent and rhythmic, woodpeckers symbolize determination, opportunity, and the heartbeat of the forest.
  • Cardinals – Vibrant and spirited, cardinals represent vitality, faith, and the beauty of year-round color.
  • Blue Jays – Bold and vocal, blue jays symbolize assertiveness, intelligence, and the vibrancy of life.

17 Best Tips for Describing Birds in Writing

Describing birds in your writing can be a mesmerizing way to add depth, texture, and symbolism.

Whether it’s the delicate flutter of a sparrow or the majestic soar of an eagle, birds can bring a unique dimension to your narrative.

Here are 17 bird-themed tips to help you weave vivid avian imagery into your writing.

Each tip is explored in detail, offering you the tools to make your descriptions take flight.

1. Feathered Flourish – Focus on Feathers

Feathers define birds. When describing them, delve into their color, texture, and what they reveal about the bird’s persona.

For example, depicting a sparrow’s feathers could go beyond mere color.

You might say, “The sparrow’s feathers seemed brushed by twilight; each a small canvas capturing the soft glow of the setting sun.”

This not only paints a vivid picture but also introduces a sensory aspect.

It links the bird to the broader canvas of the natural world, allowing readers to feel the warmth, see the hues, and sense the bird’s place in the world.

This attention to detail can turn a simple description into an evocative image that stays with the reader.

2. Melodic Metaphors – Use Birdsong

Birdsong is more than a sound; it’s an emotion.

When describing it, use metaphors and similes to create an emotional connection.

Rather than saying a robin chirps, you might describe its song as “a melody rippling like a gentle brook, cutting through the quiet of dawn.”

This method transcends mere auditory description.

It paints a picture, sets a mood, and plunges the reader into a moment.

It’s about crafting a scene that’s almost palpable, using the bird’s song as a tool to transport the reader to that tranquil morning, where they can almost feel the coolness of the dawn and the serenity it brings.

3. Winged Whimsy – Capture Movement

A bird’s movement can be highly expressive.

Whether it’s an eagle’s dignified glide or a hummingbird’s frenetic dance, capturing this can add dynamism to your writing.

Consider a description like, “The hummingbird hovered in the air, its wings a blur, as if stitching the very fabric of time.”

This kind of imagery does more than describe movement.

It infuses the bird with a magical quality, making it a creature not just of feathers and flight but of wonder and fantasy.

Descriptions like this elevate the bird from a mere creature to a symbol, a bearer of meaning, and an entity that transcends the ordinary.

4. Aerial Acrobatics – Highlight Flight Patterns

Flight patterns can reveal a lot about a bird’s nature and the mood of a scene.

For instance, describing an eagle’s flight can convey majesty and power.

You might write, “The eagle ascended with a regal ease, each wingbeat a testament to its dominion over the skies.”

This goes beyond the physical act of flying. It touches on the eagle’s symbolic power, portraying it as a ruler of its realm.

It’s about capturing the grace, the strength, and the sheer majesty of its flight.

Descriptions like these can elevate your narrative, turning a simple action into a powerful metaphor that reflects broader themes or emotions in your writing.

5. Nest Narratives – Describe Bird Habitats

Bird habitats can set the scene and context for your narrative.

Describing a nest, a tree hollow, or even a cliff ledge can add authenticity.

You could say, “The sparrow’s nest, a woven tapestry of twigs and leaves, cradled the tree’s nook, a testament to nature’s ingenuity.”

This type of description does more than just portray a physical location.

It gives insight into the bird’s life and survival.

It can create a sense of intimacy, pulling the reader closer to the bird’s world, and highlighting the intricate connections between creatures and their environments.

6. Beak Banter – Focus on Vocalizations and Calls

Bird calls and vocalizations can be very expressive.

Describing these can add auditory texture to your writing. For example, instead of just stating a crow cawed, you could write, “The crow’s call was a harsh caw, echoing like a laugh across the empty fields.”

This captures the nature of the sound and its impact on the setting.

It’s not just about what the sound is, but how it resonates with the environment and the characters.

It can set a mood, be it ominous, cheerful, or soothing.

The key is to use these sounds not just as background noise, but as active elements that contribute to the atmosphere of your scene.

7. Plumage Palette – Explore Colors and Patterns

The colors and patterns of a bird’s plumage can be striking.

Describing these can add visual vibrancy to your narrative.

Take a peacock for example. Instead of simply stating its feathers are colorful, try, “The peacock’s tail unfurled like a kaleidoscopic fan, each feather a vibrant brushstroke of nature’s palette.”

This kind of description paints a vivid picture.

It turns the bird into a living work of art, inviting readers to visualize not just the colors, but the beauty and intricacy of the patterns.

It’s about capturing the awe and wonder such a sight can evoke, making the reader pause and appreciate the natural splendor.

8. Avian Antics – Capture Characterful Behavior

Birds often display unique and characterful behaviors that can enliven your writing.

Describing these antics provides insight into their personalities.

For example, a raven solving a puzzle or a bowerbird decorating its nest demonstrates intelligence and resourcefulness.

Writing such as, “The raven, with a click of its beak, nudged the puzzle piece into place, its black eyes glinting with a hint of glee,” invites readers into the bird’s world.

It’s about painting a fuller picture, showcasing birds not just as animals but as beings with their quirks, habits, and intelligence.

By bringing these behaviors to the fore, you can add another layer to your narrative and engage your readers on a deeper level.

9. Sensory Symphony – Engage All Senses

Engaging all the senses can make your bird descriptions more immersive.

Describe not just how a bird looks, but how its feathers feel, how its movement sounds, or even how its habitat smells.

For instance, “The duck’s feathers were a tapestry of textures, from the silkiness of its undercoat to the oil-slicked toughness of its outer quills.”

By involving multiple senses, you can create a richer, multi-dimensional portrayal of birds.

It’s about giving the reader a sense as if they’re experiencing the bird’s presence firsthand, making the encounter with the bird more vivid and memorable.

10. Behavioral Beacon – Signal Seasonal Changes

Bird behaviors often change with the seasons, and this can be a poignant aspect to capture.

Migratory patterns, mating dances, or nesting can signal the passage of time in your story.

Describing these seasonal behaviors, like “With the first blush of spring, the robin returned, its song a cheerful herald of warmer days,” can add layers of depth to your setting.

It aligns the life of birds with the rhythm of the natural world, providing a backdrop that can reflect changes in your story or the internal states of your characters.

11. Symbolic Soaring – Use Birds as Symbols

Birds have rich symbolic meanings across cultures.

They can symbolize freedom, hope, or even foreboding. Integrate these symbols into your writing to add a layer of meaning.

For example, an owl in a story might not only be a background creature but also a symbol of wisdom or a harbinger of change.

“The owl perched silently above, its presence a solemn reminder of the wisdom that comes with age and experience,” illustrates how you can weave symbolism into your description.

This allows the bird to embody deeper themes and resonate with the reader on a symbolic level.

12. Dynamic Duos – Contrast with Characters

Use birds to create contrast or to mirror your characters’ journeys.

A caged bird can reflect a character’s own trapped situation or desire for freedom.

For example, “As she watched the caged finch flutter against the bars, its plight echoed her own sense of confinement.”

This approach does more than depict the bird; it uses the bird as a reflection of the character’s emotions and circumstances, offering a powerful emotional connection and a mirror to human experiences.

13. Rhythmic Renderings – Mimic Bird Movement in Prose

The rhythm of your prose can reflect the movement of birds.

Long, flowing sentences can mimic the graceful soaring of a swan, while short, choppy sentences can echo the flitting of a finch.

For instance, “The heron glided over the water—a slow, seamless waltz—its reflection a ghostly dance partner below.”

By mirroring the rhythm of bird movements in your sentence structure, you provide the reader with a literary echo of the bird’s physical grace.

This creates a harmonious reading experience that’s almost like watching the bird in motion.

14. Habitat Harmony – Align Descriptions with Environment

Birds are deeply connected to their habitats, and reflecting this in your descriptions can add authenticity.

Describe how a bird interacts with its environment, like a woodpecker tapping into a tree or a seagull wheeling over the ocean.

You might write, “The woodpecker drummed against the old oak, a staccato rhythm that seemed to breathe life into the forest.”

Such descriptions root the bird in its setting, giving a sense of place and showing the interconnectedness of nature’s tapestry.

15. Perspective Play – Vary Your Viewpoint

Changing your narrative perspective can offer a fresh angle on bird descriptions.

Describe a bird from far away, then up close, or even from the bird’s perspective. For example, “From afar, the hawk was a mere speck against the vast blue. Up close, every feather was a detail in a masterpiece of evolution.”

This technique can add depth and scale to your descriptions, offering a richer visual experience and drawing readers into the scene more effectively.

16. Emotional Echo – Reflect Mood through Birds

Birds can be used to echo the emotional landscape of your story.

A joyful scene might be accompanied by the lively chatter of sparrows, while a somber moment could be underscored by the solitary call of a crow.

Writing that “The crows’ solemn cries seemed to mourn the day’s end, as shadows gathered in the silence,” can tie the atmosphere closely to the narrative, using the birds to deepen the emotional impact of your scenes.

17. Cultural Context – Weave in Folklore and Myth

Birds often have a place in folklore and myth, and tapping into these stories can add a layer of richness to your writing.

Integrate cultural stories or myths about birds to give your descriptions a deeper resonance.

“The raven, long a harbinger of fate in local lore, watched from atop the church spire, its black eyes knowing.”

This not only gives your bird descriptions a more profound significance but also ties them to the cultural and historical context of your setting.

Check out this video about how to describe birds in writing:

30 Best Words to Describe a Bird in Writing

Here are 30 of the best words to talk about birds in writing.

  • Plumage-rich
  • Resplendent

Each of these words holds the power to conjure a specific image or feeling about birds.

Use them to craft descriptions with precision and emotion.

Moving beyond single words, crafting phrases that reflect the nuanced behaviors and attributes of birds can add an evocative layer to your writing.

30 Best Phrases to Describe a Bird in Writing

The following phrases blend imagery and emotion, ideal for enhancing your narratives with finely-tuned bird descriptions:

  • Wings slicing the air
  • Beak glistening at dawn
  • Tail feathers fanning out like rays of the sun
  • Eyes gleaming with intelligence
  • Song piercing the morning haze
  • Silhouette against the twilight sky
  • Claws gripping the branch with silent authority
  • Nest cradled in the crook of a tree
  • Feathers ruffled by the whispering wind
  • Shadow flitting across the ground
  • Plumage blending with the autumn leaves
  • Beating wings stirring the calm air
  • Calls echoing in the forest canopy
  • Flight cutting through the mist
  • Dance of courtship, intricate and full of zeal
  • Reflection skimming the surface of the lake
  • Perched like a sentinel atop the old pine
  • Darting through the underbrush
  • A flash of color in the verdant meadow
  • Aloft in the updraft, effortlessly suspended
  • A symphony of calls at dusk
  • The soft cooing at day’s end
  • Feathers coated in the morning’s dew
  • A swift chase over the water’s surface
  • Migratory arc etched across the sky
  • Preening meticulously, every feather an artifact
  • The sudden stillness before the strike
  • A solitary silhouette on a weathered fence post
  • Inquisitive gaze from within the thicket
  • The serene float on a tranquil pond

3 Examples of How to Describe Birds in Writing (in three Different Genres)

Let’s look at examples of how to describe birds in writing in different kinds of stories.

Fantasy Genre: The Enchanted Eagle

In the twilight-shrouded realm of Eldoria, the Great Eagle, guardian of the Whispering Woods, unfurled its shimmering wings. Each feather shimmered with ethereal light, casting prismatic glows against the gnarled branches of the ancient trees. With eyes like molten gold piercing through the dusk, the creature let out a call that sang of ancient magic and secrets untold. Its talons, relics of a bygone era, grasped the mystical Stone of Sight, which pulsed in harmony with its heartbeat. The Eagle soared upwards, the air around it alive with whispers of enchantment, its majestic form a silhouette against the canvas of the constellations.

Mystery Genre: The Clue of the Crimson Cardinal

Detective Lila Grey stood motionless, the crunch of the autumn leaves underfoot breaking the silence of the morning. Her gaze fixed on the flash of red that flitted above the crime scene—a cardinal, its vibrant plumage a stark contrast to the somber mood. The bird’s keen eyes seemed to scrutinize the area, darting from the body to the blood-stained note left behind. As it sang a trilling melody, Lila pondered if the cardinal was an unwitting witness to the misdeed. The way it circled, almost protectively, around the oak tree, hinted at a secret only this avian bystander knew.

Romance Genre: The Dance of the Doves

Amidst the gentle hum of the garden party, two doves cooed softly, their gentle ballet a mirror to Eleanor and Thomas’s newfound love. The birds, with their silken white feathers, glided side by side, wings almost touching, embodying the tenderness shared between the two hearts below. As the pair nuzzled beak to beak, so too did Eleanor and Thomas lean in for their first, shy kiss, their audience of doves bearing witness to the silent promise of enduring affection. In the soft glow of dusk, the lovers and doves alike were wrapped in the warm embrace of a love as pure as the driven snow.

Final Thoughts: How to Describe Birds in Writing

With feathers unfurled and tales told, remember that the sky’s the limit when describing our avian friends in writing.

And if this flight of fancy has your creativity soaring, wing your way through our trove of articles for more literary inspiration.

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Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (Research on Birds)

English Compositions

Short Essay on My Favourite Bird [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF

Birds are one of the most beautiful creatures in the world. Most of them look very beautiful and they can fly above the sky. In this lesson today, you will learn how to write a short essay on your favourite bird.

Feature image of Short Essay on My Favourite Bird

Short Essay on My Favourite Bird Peacock in 100 Words 

There are tens of thousands of birds in the world but my favourite bird is the peacock. A peacock is a beautiful bird. It has a shiny, dark blue neck and a crown on its head. Its tail feathers are colourful and long. During the monsoon season, peacocks spread their feathers and dance gracefully.

Their dance is spectacular and brings joy to those watching. Peacocks are the male birds of their species. The females are called peahen and are less colourful than the males. Peacocks live on the upper branches of tall trees and prefer running to flying. They are quite agile on foot. In India, peacocks have religious and cultural significance. They are the national bird of our country. 

Short Essay on My Favourite Bird Parrot in 200 Words 

There are many different types of birds in the world. My favourite bird is the parrot. Parrots come in different sizes, shapes, and colours. Some are single-coloured while others have bright, multi-coloured feathers. The colour of their plumage can range from predominantly green with some red to a vibrant mix of red, orange, green, blue, yellow, pink, and black. Some smaller species of parrots can only grow up to ten centimetres while some larger varieties grow up to a hundred centimetres and weigh over a kilogram. 

Parrots are omnivores and eat nuts, seeds, berries, fruits, plants, grains as well as small insects. They have a curved beak that helps them split fruits and nuts. These birds are quite intelligent and can mimic human speech. They are very playful and friendly in nature. Parrots usually build their nests in the hollow of trees and lay eggs twice a year. Baby parrots are called chicks and are very cute. 

In recent times, due to habitat loss, climate change, and wildlife trade, many types of parrots are becoming endangered. Many people keep parrots as pets in cages for entertainment and do not take good care of them. This needs to be stopped. Parrots are great birds and we should do our best to protect them and take care of them. 

Short Essay on My Favourite Bird Cuckoo in 400 Words 

I have seen hundreds of different types of birds and observed their unique quirks and I adore them all, but my favourite is the cuckoo. Cuckoos are black in colour and have long tails. They look like crows but are smaller than them. The sound that cuckoos make is very pleasant to listen to and they are quite famous for it as well. Their melodious call fills everyone with joy. Cuckoos live on trees and in bushes. They eat fruits, insects, and worms. They especially like eating caterpillars. 

Cuckoos are migratory birds and we often see them during the spring season. Hence, they are called the harbinger of spring. Cuckoos have a peculiar habit. They do not make nests and are infamous for laying eggs in the nests of other birds, usually crows. A female cuckoo can lay eggs in as many as 50 nests during the breeding season.

Cuckoos have evolved to lay eggs that mimic the eggs of crows. This prevents their eggs from being ejected from the nest. The crows mistake the eggs as their own and look after them. Cuckoo chicks hatch and grow up under the care of crows. 

In the village, we wake up every day listening to the chirping of different birds and during the spring season, it is beautiful ‘kuhu kuhu’ of the cuckoos that dominate. There are at least ten pairs of cuckoos that live in our orchard and we give them grains and fruits to feed on.

Although they are usually afraid of humans and don’t come too close, I once befriended a cuckoo. It had red eyes and used to come near the windowsill of my room every morning. I fed it grains that I got from my grandmother and also caught a few hairy caterpillars for it. One day, it brought along another cuckoo. Both of them looked quite similar. 

I had a great time interacting with the cuckoos in my village orchard and fell in love with them. When the vacation was over, we had to come back and I started missing the cuckoos. I read a lot of articles on these birds and filled my room with posters of these beautiful creatures. After a few months, when we went to visit my grandparents again, it was already winter and the cuckoos had migrated. I never saw my friend again but I still remember its amazing red eyes and melodious voice. Cuckoos have since been my favourite birds. 

In the session above, I have written three essays on three different birds. You can choose any of those according to your requirements. I have also tried to write the essays in a very simple language that every student can easily understand. If you still have any doubts regarding this session, please let us know through the comment section below. If you want to read more such essays on several important topics, keep browsing our website. 

To get the latest updates on our upcoming sessions, kindly join us on Telegram. Thank you. See you again, soon. 

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  • Sparrow Essay

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Essay on Sparrow

Sparrows are small yet attractive birds. This bird is found all over the world including India. The sparrow is a very nimble bird. There are many species of sparrow found. The sparrow has small wings. Its beak is yellow and the colour of the feet is brown. Its body is light greyish-black. They usually have black spots on their neck. Male sparrows and female sparrows are different in appearance. Male sparrows are more attractive than female ones. 

A sparrow is an omnivorous bird. It eats seeds, grains, fruits and insects etc. Sparrows generally build their nests in the roof of houses, buildings, bridges and hollows of trees. In urban areas, these birds often nest in the houses of humans.

Details and Other Characteristics 

Sparrows are flexible in all climates. Their lifespan is 4 to 7 years. These birds usually fly at a speed of about 24 miles per hour. Sparrows mostly like to fly in herds. These birds are rarely seen in hilly areas. Sadly, the sparrow species are dying due to environmental pollution and other reasons. And as a result, this beautiful bird has started to disappear gradually. To spread awareness about sparrows and their protection, “World Sparrow Day” is celebrated every year on 20 March worldwide. Excess temperature proves fatal for these birds.

Some Facts About Sparrows

Once, the sparrow was the most common bird in Britain. However, their ratio has been steadily decreasing for some time.

The common sparrow in East Asia is not the house sparrow, it’s the tree sparrow.

They are very social birds, in fact, they make their nest in colonies, houses, etc.

They are mainly vegetarian but young birds need high protein in their diet so they eat insects.

Cats, dogs, snakes and foxes are the major predators for the house sparrow.

Three-quarters of sparrows disappeared from London between 1994 and 2000. Due to fast decline, this bird is listed as nearly endangered.

The length of a sparrow can be a maximum of 8 inches and 0.8 to 1.4 ounces in weight.

Although sparrows do not belong to the family of water birds, they can swim very fast.

Sparrows have beautiful voices and their chirping can be heard all around.

Some of the species of sparrow include the vesper sparrow, tree sparrow, white-crowned sparrow, song sparrow and fox sparrow.

The vesper sparrow: The vesper sparrow has a long tail and a relatively larger body and is known to respond quite promptly to changes in habitat. It is mainly found across the majority of the Northern part of the United States and in parts of Canada. 

Tree sparrow: The Eurasian tree sparrow is a rare type of sparrow and can usually be spotted in areas like farmlands and woodlands. However, it is unfortunately even more difficult to find it in urban areas due to the growing environmental dangers like pollution, overpopulation, etc. 

White-crowned sparrow: This bird’s native is in North America and although the white-crowned sparrows are numerous in numbers, their population is still declining quite quickly. 

Song sparrow: The song sparrow is known to be one of the most easily adaptable and abundantly found species compared to the other types of sparrows found in North America. 

Fox sparrow: This sparrow is known to build nests in far-off areas such as those of the north and western mountains. A fox sparrow is a little larger than a song- sparrow and it is often known to be only either a winter visitor or simply a migrant. 

Extinction of the Sparrow

At present, it is seen that due to pollution and deforestation, etc., results in temperature have risen. Hence, the sparrows are migrating from the cities in search of food and nests. However, they are not able to get rest even in the rural areas, because the villages too are populous. Sparrow Day is celebrated every year to make people more aware about the threat to the lives of this bird’s population. The purpose of celebrating this day is to increase awareness among people about saving the life of this lovely bird.

To save sparrows, this bird has been declared as a State bird in Bihar so that everyone can pay attention and take a serious step to protect this bird. If the right measures are not taken to preserve these beautiful birds in time, then the day is not far when they will go extinct. According to bird scientists, people should provide some places in their homes to recall sparrows, where they can easily make their own nest, lay their eggs and their children can be safe from the invading birds, cats, dogs, snakes and foxes. We must pledge to take some measures to protect their lives.

Sparrows are one of the most beautiful birds. Due to pollution and other reasons, these birds are on the verge of extinction. According to the ornithologists, people should provide some places in their homes for their shelter, where they can easily make their own nest and lay their eggs. So that these invasive birds can be saved. These are some basic steps that should be taken to protect these birds from the predator birds.

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FAQs on Sparrow Essay

1. When and Why is ‘Sparrow Day’ Celebrated?

World Sparrow Day is celebrated every year on March 20 worldwide. Sparrow Day is celebrated every year to enable the bird to survive. The purpose of celebrating this day is to increase awareness among people about saving the life of this lovely bird. To save the bird species, it has been declared as a state bird in Bihar so that everyone can take necessary measurements in order to protect this bird.

2. List Some Interesting Facts about the Sparrow.

Some of the facts are:-

The length of sparrow can be a maximum of 8 inches and 0.8 to 1.4 ounces in weight.

Some of the species of sparrow include the vesper sparrow, white-crowned sparrow, song sparrow and fox sparrow.

Once, the sparrow was the most common bird in Britain. However, their quantity has been steadily decreasing here from some time.

3. How Does Pollution Affect the Sparrow? How Can We Save Them?

At present, it is seen that due to pollution, cutting trees, etc., the temperature of cities is increasing very fast. Hence, they are migrating from the cities in search of food and a nest. However, they are not able to get rest even in the rural areas, because the villages are also polluted. Due to pollution and other reasons these birds are on the verge of extinction. According to bird scientists, people should provide some places in their homes to recall sparrows, where they can easily make their own nest, lay their eggs and their children can be safe from the invading birds, cats, dogs, snakes, and foxes.

4. Are sparrows endangered? 

Yes, sparrows are considered to be an endangered species, sadly,  not only in India but also on a worldwide basis. The majority of the factors that have led to this are more or less because of man. The ever increasing pollution levels along with deforestation, growing population, urbanisation, demolishing mother nature, etc., has slowly led to the endangerment of this beautiful species. The population growth is posing a predicament for sparrows because that restricts these birds from building their nests.

5. When is World Sparrow Day and why is it celebrated?

Every year, 20th March is celebrated as World Sparrow Day all across the globe. This day is celebrated worldwide to spread awareness regarding sparrows, how they’re going extinct, how they need to be saved, and also as a way of appreciating these little birds. The principal goal of this day is to raise and spread as much awareness as possible, among people to try their best to help save sparrows. This way, we might just be able to preserve the lives of these lovely birds. 

6. How can we as individuals help to protect sparrows and save them from going extinct? 

There are a number of things an individual could try to do to protect the common house sparrow. For instance, one could let a sparrow build its nest and lay its eggs in their backyard or on the roof of their house, etc., as a result of which they would be providing aid to the bird. That way, sparrows also won’t fall prey to foxes, snakes, etc., that easily. Another way would be to contribute to the environment instead of harming it. The less pollution we cause, the better it will be for not only the environment but also for the animals and people living in it.

7. Describe the sparrow’s diet and its various types. 

Sparrows are tiny, yet pretty birds that fly around in herds and are social birds. A sparrow’s diet mainly consists of grains, different types of seeds, fruits, and even insects. Although sparrows are more commonly found to be vegetarian, they’re still considered to be omnivorous birds. This is because young birds often feed on insects due to their need for a high amount of protein. 

The most common type of sparrow is the house sparrow but there are several other types including the tree sparrow, the fox sparrow, the vesper sparrow, the single sparrow, and the white-crowned sparrow.

8. Is the study material provided by Vedantu effective? 

Vedantu is a highly revered and quite popular site for students to not only study and hone their skills, but it also helps them to track their progress in a way. The study material provided by Vedantu is far less complicated and at the same time, it’s very informative as well as engaging, thereby being a great source of studying for students. You can easily access the free study material Vedantu provides on its site.

Parrot Essay

500+ words parrot essay.

Parrots are social birds known for their association with human beings throughout history. They are especially loved for their ability to mimic human speech and are favoured as pet birds. They are also the most colourful, clever and charismatic birds on the planet. With the help of this parrot essay, students will know about this creature and also learn some interesting facts about it. Moreover, students who want to improve their writing skills must check out the list of CBSE Essays on different topics. It will help them to write essays on various topics with which they can work on improving their essay writing skills.

Parrots are colourful birds and look attractive and beautiful. There are over 360 different species of parrot in the world. Almost 100 of these are threatened with extinction due to loss of habitat. Parrots are found in tropical and subtropical regions such as India, Africa, Central and South America, Asia, New Zealand, the Caribbean and Australia. Parrots are divided into three groups: “true” parrots, cockatoos and New Zealand parrots. The average lifetime of small parrots such as budgies is approximately 10 years. However, very large parrots have near-human lifespans and can live for 70 to 80 years or even more.

Parrots are one of the most marvellously diverse groups of birds in the world. Anyone who knows little about these birds can instantly recognise a parrot by its shape and colour. It has a sharply curved upper beak topped by a fleshy cere. The parrot has a big head, stout body, muscular prehensile tongue, and distinctive feet with two toes pointing forward and two pointing back. This combination of anatomical features differentiates parrots apart from other birds. Also, there are other characteristics and behaviours that distinguish parrots from most other birds.

Parrots are omnivores in nature. They eat a wide variety of foods, including fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, nectar, insects, and in a few cases, flesh. Parrots are the only birds that can eat food with their feet. Other birds use their beaks or use their feet to grasp and carry the food. The main predators of parrots are snakes, birds of prey, monkeys and humans.

Parrots have very loud voices. They are termed ‘vocal learners’ and are better imitators than other birds. Although they do not have lips to vocalise words, they have independent control over their voice membranes which allows them to create a wide variety of sounds. They have been observed to use their speech to make and deny requests for food and other things. Also, it is observed that parrots can mimic human voices. They can learn the meanings of words and sayings. This shows that parrots are highly intelligent. Some scientists say that parrots are at least as smart as dolphins and chimpanzees.

Parrots can entertain people for hours with their funny, charming, surprising and maddening behaviour. People who keep parrots as pet birds can also have conversations with them. The more love and attention the parrot gets, the more involved and interactive it becomes with the person. Many parrots are very affectionate, even lovable, with trusted people. Parrots are one of the few bird groups that can feel the music. They can feel the beat and show their movement according to the beat of the music.

In India, it is illegal to keep parrots as pets in homes. The Government of India has taken this step to save different species of birds under the wildlife protection act. So, we should also help in protecting the parrot. We can do so by supporting the groups that protect parrots and their habitats. We must learn and spread awareness about conserving wildlife, birds and animals. We should never buy a wild-caught parrot as a pet, and wherever we see such kind of activity, we must inform the concerned authority.

Students must have found the “Parrot Essay” useful for improving their essay writing skills. They can get the study material and the latest updates on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams, at BYJU’S.

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Birds and words

Western meadowlark at Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge

It’s the peak of songbird migration in many parts of the country, and that’s probably loud and clear when you step outside in the morning. Both migratory and non-migratory birds sing in spring to impress would-be mates and mark their territories, filling the air with their earnest trills, chirps and whistles. 

But you probably hear birds every day of the year without realizing it. 

Have you ever been told you eat like a bird, praised for your eagle eye or reminded that the early bird catches the worm? 

Maybe you slipped and fell on the ice this winter and hurt your coccyx — from the Greek word for cuckoo due to the bone’s resemblance to the eponymous bird’s beak.  

Western yellow-billed cuckoo perched on a branch.

Gardeners may be familiar with columbine, meaning dove-like plant; “hens and chicks,” a rosette-shaped succulent; and larkspur, a flower with long petals thought to resemble the talons of a meadowlark.

In Mexico, you might call a bowl of popcorn “las palomitas de maíz,” meaning, little pigeons of corn. 

If you have a glass of merlot with your popcorn, you are introducing another bird to the flock. Merlot comes from the French “merle” for blackbird. 

And whether or not you recognize the woeful coos of the mourning dove, you probably know what it sounds like when doves cry.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

When you start looking and listening for birds in language, you’ll find them everywhere. 

“We could fill an entire show with bird references,” said Martha Barnette, co-host of the public radio talk show “A Way with Words,” when I called in to ask about the prevalence of birds in language. She and her co-host Grant Barrett, a linguist and lexicographer, provided all the examples mentioned above. 

My question was motivated by a realization. There are many good reasons to care about and conserve birds and their habitats. They play irreplaceable roles in nature — pollination, predation and seed dispersal, to name a few. And they drive a lucrative recreational industry. More than 96 million people in the U.S. watch birds, and wildlife watching generates more than $250 billion in economic impacts each year. 

Two young boys using binoculars to look at birds

But maybe we should also celebrate the role birds play in shaping our language. 

Through idioms, analogies, proverbs and more, they enliven what we say and how we say it, providing an endless source of semantic inspiration. 

Barnette, who studied ancient Greek, Latin and Spanish, shared a favorite proverb en español: La fe es el pájaro que siente la luz cuando el alba aún está oscura. 

Meaning, “Faith is the bird that feels the light while the dawn is still dark.”

“It’s the perfect metaphor for dark times,” she said. Birds start singing because they know the sun will rise eventually.

It made me think of a well-known poem in English, “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson. What could be more hopeful than a beautiful creature that flies and sings? 

Be the wind beneath their wings

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service works with partners across North America to study and conserve birds and their habitats. There are many ways you can help birds, too. Here are five ways to get involved:

  • Take part in community science: Help scientists answer key questions about birds, such as arrival dates, abundance and departure dates of migratory birds, and report sightings of rare and common birds. 
  • Share the shore: Follow posted information at beaches to give shorebirds the space they need to forage, nest and raise their young.
  • Prevent collisions: An estimated one billion birds die as a result of window collisions in North America each year, attracted either by lights at night or the reflection of sky and trees during the day. Use bird decals, window film and timers for lights to prevent collisions.
  • Be a brew gooder: Look for shade-grown and bird-friendly coffees, which are produced on farms that provide critical shade-cover habitat for migratory and resident birds in tropical landscapes threatened by deforestation.  
  • Buy a Duck Stamp: Purchasing Federal Duck Stamps directly supports conservation of more wetland habitats that birds and other species depend upon.

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A Birder’s Guide to Boston University

American goldfinch. Video via iStock/pascalmarchand

Believe it or not, more than 100 bird species visit BU’s urban campuses—whether you’re a beginning bird-watcher or an expert in ornithology, there’s lots to see

Marc chalufour.

Concrete. Asphalt. Brick. The city is not a natural habitat for wildlife, yet birds of all shapes, sizes, and colors can be found in Boston. In fact, more than 100 bird species visit Boston University’s campuses throughout the year. They’re “the last of the truly wild species around us. The last of the great migrations,” says Andrew King, a professor at the Questrom School of Business and an avid birder. And, he says, “urban areas can sometimes be better than rural ones.” If you look closely, BU’s campuses—Charles River, Fenway, and Medical—are home to an incredible array of birds. 

In recent years, peregrine falcons have nested on dorms , red-tailed hawks got cozy atop the School of Law , and wild turkeys have roamed the streets . The waterways that form natural boundaries for the Charles River and Fenway Campuses provide an ideal habitat for waterfowl and migratory songbirds. 

[Birds are] the last of the truly wild species around us. The last of the great migrations. Andrew King

Birding as a hobby has exploded in popularity in recent years—a trend widely attributed to pandemic-forced social distancing and more people working from home. People took notice of the rhythms of the environment around their homes and sought the safety of natural outdoor spaces. Audubon , the National Audubon Society’s magazine, reported that sales of birdseed skyrocketed in the first half of 2020. The Global Big Day , an international birding event held each May, has set participation records four years in a row. BU students, staff, faculty, and alumni have found their own ways to appreciate the wilderness around them.

  • Stan Sclaroff, dean of Arts & Sciences, began taking daily walks on the Charles River Esplanade during the pandemic. He often invites colleagues to join him. The birds, he says, “are truly a source of wonderment and help us to pause, focus, and marvel at the natural world that’s right here, near campus.” He recalls watching immature bald eagles and hawks feeding on the river.
  • Samantha Casey (CAS’21, SSW’25) finds beauty in one of BU’s most visible species, the common pigeon, and manages a pigeon appreciation Instagram account . 
  • Randy Ellis, a professor of economics at the College of Arts & Sciences, created a winter bird bingo card as a pandemic diversion for family and faculty friends.
  • Fred Wasserman, an associate professor of biology at CAS, challenged his ornithology students to identify 10 bird species on campus by sound, using the Merlin Bird ID app.
  • Chuck Hagner (CAS’82, COM’82), the former editor of BirdWatching magazine and director of the nonprofit Bird City Wisconsin , teaches birding classes in the Milwaukee area. 
  • School of Public Health colleagues Anita DeStefano, a professor of biostatistics, and Amparo Ortiz, assistant director of academic partnership, led Celebrate Urban Birds, a summer program for children at Boston’s Blackstone Community Center, for four years. 

Those are just a few of the creative ways the BU community appreciates Boston’s birds. Since 2000, birders on the eBird app have reported 145 bird species on BU campuses, from the common (Canada geese and pigeons) to the rare (Wilson’s warbler and yellow-billed cuckoo), reflecting remarkable biodiversity across the University.

BU Today asked avid BU birders to share tips on when, where, and how to start birding on campus.

  • Charles River Campus

The northern edge of BU’s largest campus is defined by its namesake river, which flows past dorms, fields, schools, and the BU Beach. Explore the Esplanade along the Charles River and watch for Canada geese, double-crested cormorants, red-breasted mergansers, and mallards—after all, this is where the stars of Make Way for Ducklings first settled. Herring gulls wander upriver from Boston Harbor and red-tailed hawks often soar overhead. Inland, the most visible wildlife might be pigeons cooing from Comm Ave rooftops, but look a little closer and you may notice some surprising visitors. Find a green space and watch for movement or flashes of color in the trees and bushes. James Johnson, a professor and chair of history at CAS, reports seeing a tree near Kenmore Square filled with cedar waxwings one winter and an irruption of robins on Bay State Road one spring. 

The image shows a majestic red-tailed hawk perched on a tree branch. The hawk has a large, powerful build with broad wings and a distinctive reddish-brown tail feathers that give it its name. Its sharp, hooked beak and intense gaze convey the bird's predatory nature. The hawk is surrounded by lush, green foliage, suggesting a natural, outdoor setting. Overall, the image captures the impressive presence and beauty of this iconic North American raptor.

Red-Tailed Hawk

The image depicts a male mallard duck swimming gracefully on a calm body of water. The duck has a neutral blond and brown appearance with a chestnut-colored breast. Its sleek, streamlined body and webbed feet propel it effortlessly through the water. In the background, there is lush, green vegetation, suggesting a natural, wetland environment. The mallard's neutral colors and elegant movements make it a beautiful and recognizable waterfowl species.

Cedar Waxwing

The image depicts a vibrant American goldfinch perched on a branch. The goldfinch has a bright yellow body with black wings and a black cap on its head. Its small, conical beak and alert expression give it a lively, energetic appearance. The goldfinch is surrounded by lush, green foliage, suggesting a natural, outdoor setting. American goldfinches are known for their cheerful, bouncing flight and distinctive call notes, making them a beloved backyard bird species in North America.

American Goldfinch

Also look for:.

Common: Canada goose, house sparrow, song sparrow, herring gull, American robin, blue jay, double-crested cormorant, common pigeon, common starling 

Uncommon: red-breasted merganser, northern mockingbird, peregrine falcon, tufted titmouse, common grackle, mute swan, great blue heron, black-capped chickadee, common turkey, house finch, northern cardinal

Rare: American bald eagle, Cooper’s hawk, red-throated diver, hermit thrush, eastern kingbird, red-winged blackbird, American black duck, osprey, dark-eyed junco, warbling vireo, catbird, white-breasted nuthatch, golden crowned kinglet

This data was obtained from the eBird Observational Dataset on GBIF.org and represents a partial list of the 78 species reported from 2000–2023. 

Fenway Campus

Boston’s Riverway , a narrow 34-acre park that follows the Muddy River as it flows from Dorchester to Back Bay, is one of the city’s premier birding locations, and BU’s Fenway Campus borders one of its northernmost stretches. Waterfowl—including mallards, American black ducks, and delightfully colored wood ducks—feed in the water. Watch for great blue herons and black-crowned night herons lurking in the shallows and listen for the drumming of downy, hairy, and red-bellied woodpeckers in the trees. The beginning of May, early in the morning, is perhaps the best time to visit the area because of the migratory birds passing through. Your patience could be rewarded with the sighting of a bright orange Baltimore oriole, the song of a warbling vireo, or any of dozens of tiny, colorful species stopping for a rest on their way north.

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Red-Bellied Woodpecker

The image shows a white-throated sparrow perched on a branch. The sparrow has a distinctive, peanut-sized white throat and white-striped head, contrasting with its blended brown back and wings. Its beak is small and conical, adapted for eating seeds and insects. The sparrow's body is compact and its tail is short, giving it a rounded, cute, mini appearance. The bird is surrounded by lush, green foliage of a natural, woodland setting. White-throated sparrows are a common sight in North America, known for their melodic, whistling song and their tendency to forage on the ground in small flocks.

White-Throated Sparrow

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Black-Crowned Night Heron (L) & Great Blue Heron

Also look for.

Common: mallard, black-capped chickadee, common grackle, northern cardinal, red-winged blackbird, tufted titmouse, downy woodpecker, mourning dove, American black duck, hooded merganser, white-breasted nuthatch, American goldfinch, ring-necked duck

Uncommon: catbird, common teal, Baltimore oriole, warbling vireo, northern flicker, northern shoveler, northern parula, northern pintail, yellow-rumped warbler, American crow, American redstart, cedar waxwing

Rare: yellow warbler, black-and-white warbler, Cooper’s hawk, black-throated blue warbler, common yellowthroat, blackpoll warbler, belted kingfisher, northern waterthrush, magnolia warbler, red-eyed vireo, ruby-crowned kinglet

This data was obtained from the eBird Observational Dataset on GBIF.org and represents a partial list of the 136 species reported from 2000–2023. 

Medical Campus

Though landlocked and bordered by the busy Melnea Cass Boulevard and Interstate 93, BU’s Medical Campus still attracts a surprising variety of feathered friends. Raptors and seabirds fly overhead and smaller birds stop to eat and rest on the campus’ green spaces. “I’m always birding as I walk around,” says SPH’s DeStefano. She’s seen a fox sparrow and an ovenbird on those walks, and once spotted peregrine falcons nesting on BU’s Solomon Carter Fuller building. DeStefano recommends the campus’ Talbot Green, Franklin Square, and Blackstone Square for birding. 

The image shows a peregrine falcon soaring gracefully over the Charles River campus of Boston University. The falcon is the focal point, with its sleek, streamlined body (of neutral off-white and neutral brown feathers) and distinctive hooked beak clearly visible. Its wings are outstretched, propelling it effortlessly through the air. The background is slightly out of focus, but suggests an urban, built-up environment, likely the buildings and infrastructure of the university campus. Peregrine falcons have made a remarkable comeback in recent decades, with nesting pairs now found in many major cities.

Peregrine Falcon

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Fox Sparrow

The image shows an upright house finch clinging with both claws to a metallic cable at an 45-degree angle. The finch has a compact, rounded body with a micro, conical beak. Its plumage is a mix of brown, gray, and reddish-pink feathers, with the male's head and breast displaying the distinctive red coloration as it fades into the darker neutrals. The bird's feet are firmly gripping the cable, allowing it to hang at an unusual diagonal angle. The metallic cable stands out against the blurred, out-of-focus background, drawing the viewer's attention to the finch's unique perching position. House finches are known for their adaptability and ability to thrive in urban and suburban environments, often taking advantage of man-made structures like this cable for roosting and foraging.

House Finch

The image shows a herring gull in profile, with its distinctive large, hooked beak and robust body clearly visible. The gull is perched on an unknown structure, with greenish-blue ocean water visible in the out-of-focus background. The bird's plumage is a mix of (mostly) white, gray, and black feathers towards it's wing tips, characteristic of an adult herring gull. The profile angle highlights the gull's strong, angular features and provides a detailed view of its appearance. Herring gulls are known for their adaptability, opportunistic foraging, and prevalence in coastal environments, as described in the search results. Make sure you don't have any bright cars parked near them or you'll have another trip to the carwash in your future.

Herring Gull

Common: common pigeon, common starling, house sparrow, American robin, American crow

Uncommon: northern mockingbird, American goldfinch, common raven, great black-backed gull, eastern towhee, mourning dove, song sparrow

Rare: hermit thrush, gray catbird, northern cardinal, chipping sparrow, brown-headed cowbird, black-throated blue warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, rose-breasted grosbeak

This data was obtained from the eBird Observational Dataset on GBIF.org and represents a partial list of the 32 species reported from 2000–2023. 

Off Campus 

A short walk or T ride from BU’s campuses opens up all new birding opportunities. Here are some favorites recommended by members of the BU community. 

Hall’s Pond and Amory Woods

This five-acre pond and forest parcel is located just off Beacon Street, about halfway between BU’s Charles River and Fenway Campuses. Watch for great blue herons and black-crowned night herons along the edges of the pond and smaller birds in nearby trees. Emma Parker (CAS’25) recalls spotting a black-and-white warbler here last spring. 

Chestnut Hill Reservoir

This reservoir, easily accessed on the B and C Branches of the Green Line, is a popular stopover for migrating waterfowl. Pack binoculars and enjoy the clear sight lines across the water from the 1.5-mile loop path. Watch for geese, cormorants, loons, and a range of ducks. Venture into the woods along the reservoir’s northern shore to look for songbirds.

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Thousands of trees and shrubs fill this 175-acre cemetery, making it a common resting spot for migratory birds—including the brilliant scarlet tanager and Baltimore oriole—and a popular destination for birders. Questrom’s King has a piece of advice for navigating the maze of winding roads: follow the other birders. “If they are clustered around a tree and pointing, there is something unusual there,” he says. You can reach the cemetery via the MBTA’s 71 and 73 buses. 

Arnold Arboretum

With 271 acres and more than 2,000 different plant species, Arnold Arboretum is another popular spot for birds. Bring a printout of the meticulous checklist of 188 species identified here in the past century and visit the Hunnewell Visitor Center to see a list of recent sightings. Take the Orange Line to Forest Hills or the 35, 38, 39, or 51 MBTA bus to visit the arboretum.

Boston Harbor Islands

Getting out to the islands requires some work—you’ll need to purchase a ferry ticket —but it’s a great way to see something new. Seabirds, rarely seen inland, frequent the islands, including plovers, sandpipers, cormorants, and gulls.

The image depicts a striking black and white warbler perched on a tree branch. The bird has a distinctive black and white striped pattern covering its entire body, starting from it's crown and extending along it's back, down to it's wings contrasting sharply with its white chest and underparts. Its small, pointed beak and alert expression suggest it is actively foraging or surveying its surroundings. The warbler's compact, streamlined shape and the blurred, out-of-focus greenery in the background indicate this is a close-up, detailed view of the bird in its natural woodland habitat. Black and white warblers are known for their unique monochromatic coloration and acrobatic movements as they search tree trunks and branches for insects, making them a visually captivating species for birdwatchers.

Black & White Warbler

A Baltimore oriole peeking out from the side of a tree branch, as if it has sensed something in its environment. The oriole's distinctive black head, bright orange body bars are clearly visible, allowing the viewer to easily identify the species. The bird's head is turned slightly to the side, giving it an alert, inquisitive expression. This dynamic, candid pose captures the Baltimore oriole's natural curiosity and adaptability, as it navigates its woodland habitat. The blurred, out-of-focus background further emphasizes the bird as the central focus of the image.

Baltimore Oriole

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Double-Crested Cormorant

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Marc Chalufour is a senior editor/writer responsible for print and digital magazines for the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Communication. Prior to joining BU in 2018, he spent a decade editing AMC Outdoors, the Appalachian Mountain Club’s magazine, where his feature writing received multiple awards from Association Media & Publishing. Profile

Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 13 comments on A Birder’s Guide to Boston University

Thank you for writing this interesting and important article about birds. Bird life on campus is a sign of better ecology practices as well. And it would be good for BU to continue enhancing opportunities for wildlife on campus. Practices that encourage safe nesting and diversity of plants and trees could be improved at BU.

I absolutely love this article! Hope to see some birds around campus soon!

More of this! Put Marc on the “bird beat”!

Fascinating! Thank you for such a great article.

Great to see this!! I am a life long birder and naturalist. There are indeed sometimes what I like to call “visitors from wilder places” here on campus, especially during the Spring and Fall Migration, which we are in the peak of right now. A short walk down by the Charles on the walkway at this time of year might turn up some really interesting birds, like warblers that are stopping here briefly on their way north to much wilder breeding locations in the boreal forest.

One unfortunate artifact of city habitat for birds, especially during the migrations, is the negative impact of light pollution on their ability to navigate. On rare occasions, I find migratory species of birds that have become disoriented by the lights at the base of buildings here on campus. The following link is a good entry into the science and conservation action on this issue being done by Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology and affiliated groups, like the Colorado State University AeroEcology group in the link provided below.

https://aeroecolab.com/lightpollution

Terrific article! Another great spot just across the river from the Charles River campus is Magazine Beach Park along Memorial Drive. Mass Audubon hosts free bird walks there, too. In addition to the birds in the park, you often get a great view of the Peregrine Falcons that nest on top of StuVi II!

AMAZING piece; a gift. Thank you! Please do more pieces like this one. A+

Very cool! And unexpected.

Great article! I have been out of the habit of birdwatching lately but I work right by the BU Beach and I’m feeling very inspired to pick the hobby back up and get outside.

What a beautifully photographed and brilliantly written article this was. The entire piece was informative and breathtaking. Thank you

The Merlin app run by the Cornell Ornithology Lab, which is mentioned in the article, is a fantastic bird watching tool! It is incredibly user friendly and has step-by-step bird identification tools, allowing you to identify birds by size, color, regional location and time of year, as well as audio and visual recording identification. The “birder bonus” is that all the birds you log transmits to Cornell for their data analysis and population studies and tracking. I highly recommend it!

Finally, a BU Today article worth the click. Thank you for this well-presented, high quality content!

Awesome article! Thank you!

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New York Today

Falcon cam: reality tv for bird lovers.

A falcon has laid two eggs in a nest in Lower Manhattan. A camera is filming the wait for them to be hatched.

James Barron

By James Barron

Good morning. It’s Friday, and we’ll find out about a closely watched nest of peregrine falcons in Lower Manhattan. We’ll also get details on how former Gov. Andrew Cuomo scored another victory in his battle against the ethics panel created by his successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul.

A falcon guards two eggs.

There are birders who have been counting the days since March 25. And also April 2.

On those days a peregrine falcon laid the first and last of several eggs in a nest that is both private and closely watched in Lower Manhattan. The nest is private because it is on a windowless ledge of an office building that towers over South Street and Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.

The nest is closely watched because what happens there can be seen on Falcon Cam , a video feed from a camera above the nest. “An urban naturalist’s reality TV,” the writer Lenora Todaro called the feed.

The female has occupied the nest since 2020. The male is new this year, said Barbara Saunders, who has followed several generations of peregrine falcons there.

The female is apparently older than the male: He was born there, in 2020. And the clock is ticking on the cycle for hatching the eggs, usually about 35 days after they were laid.

“It’s getting a little bit late,” Saunders said.

There have been cameras on red-tailed hawks’ nests: A Hawk Cam in the office of the president of New York University followed a pair known as Bobby and Violet in 2011 after she laid three dull-white eggs. Like that feed, Falcon Cam is potentially addictive. Matthew Wills, an amateur naturalist from Brooklyn who posted images from Falcon Cam on his website last year, said that a friend checks the 55 Water Street cam more than he does — and sends him text messages, “even if nothing’s happening.”

“Whoever’s watching” — whoever is sitting on the eggs, because the male and female take turns — “is waiting for a sign that there are nestlings under the mother,” Wills said. “Or the father, as the case may be.”

On Thursday there were long moments of, well, very little. She picked up a rock with her beak. A snack? No. She dropped the rock. She cleaned her feathers. She stood up, showing off the four eggs — two white and two brown, all speckled. She nudged them to her right. She enveloped them again. The male appeared, oblivious to the idea that they were onstage all the time.

“I don’t think they have any idea of that,” Wills said. “But for those of us watching, it’s this intimate view of a process that would otherwise be extremely hard to see.”

Saunders, who worked in the area in the 1990s and often went to lunch nearby, recalled seeing “something dive on a gull” and then fly to the ledge of the Water Street building. She had heard that there were peregrine falcons in Lower Manhattan and walked by every day at lunchtime. Eventually, she said, “I saw a different one, a young one, pop up on the ledge.”

A pair known as Jack and Jjaie debuted in 1999, when a camera was installed above the ledge, sending a small black-and-white image to a monitor in the lobby of the building. Jack and Jjaie left, and by 2008 the nest had been adopted by a pair named Jasper and Jubilee. When Todaro, who writes about urban wildlife and is the author of the children’s book “Sea Lions in the Parking Lot,” wrote about falcons at 55 Water Street in 2019, those birds in residence were known as Frank and Adele.

Peregrine falcons are listed as an endangered species in New York State after being all but wiped out by pesticide residue in the prey they captured and ate. But the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation says that the falcons now nest on every bridge across the Hudson River south of Albany, and that New York City may have the largest urban population of peregrine falcons anywhere.

“What happened in the ’80s and ’90s was that the falcons started looking at these cliff-like buildings that we have and saying, Hey, that’s the place for me,” Wills said. “I once read that great horned owls took over their old nesting spots” — in cliffs along the Palisades, for example — “and prevented the peregrines from returning.”

Robert DeCandido, who as “Birding Bob” leads birding expeditions in Central Park and conducts scientific research on birds, said that the Brooklyn Bridge used to be a nesting spot for peregrine falcons. “It was on the Manhattan side, in the first caisson about 100 feet above the roadway,” he said. “One time they fledged, and a guy selling soda and water picked up the fledgling. He was trying to figure out what to do with it to make money, probably.” But the peregrine falcons abandoned that nest, he said.

Prepare for rain and temperatures in the mid-50s. Expect a chance of showers at night, with temperatures in the high 40s.

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No mistrial : Justice Juan Merchan again denied Trump’s bid for a mistrial. The former president’s lawyers had argued that Ms. Daniels’s testimony was prejudicial, but Merchan said that Trump’s insistence on denying a sexual encounter with Daniels had opened the door to her account of a tryst.

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My colleague Grace Ashford writes that the unanimous ruling by the five appellate judges set the stage for a showdown with profound ramifications for ethics enforcement in New York State. The state promised to take the case to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.

Thursday’s ruling cast doubt on the commission’s long-term viability, even though the state can seek a stay to keep the ethics board operating until the Court of Appeals issues a decision.

Hochul created the panel in 2021 to restore the public’s faith in government after Cuomo resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal. He has been fighting the panel over its attempt to force him to turn over $5 million that he received for a book about his administration’s efforts to fight Covid during the pandemic.

The new panel replaced the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, which had been dogged by rumors of corruption. Hochul moved to remove elements that had left the Joint Commission vulnerable to political influence. She reduced the number of members who would be appointed by the governor, and she created a new vetting process that involved deans from the state’s law schools. The Legislature gave its imprimatur to the new panel.

Cuomo had already sued the Joint Commission, which had approved his book deal and then rescinded its approval, and after that panel was disbanded, he also sued the new entity, the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government. The trial court agreed with Cuomo, and on Thursday, so did the Appellate Division’s Third Judicial Department, saying that the Legislature, “though well intentioned, violated the bedrock principles of separation of powers.”

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They both smiled.

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Breaking News

Star USC scientist faces scrutiny — retracted papers and a paused drug trial

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Late last year, a group of whistleblowers submitted a report to the National Institutes of Health that questioned the integrity of a celebrated USC neuroscientist’s research and the safety of an experimental stroke treatment his company was developing.

NIH has since paused clinical trials for 3K3A-APC, a stroke drug sponsored by ZZ Biotech, a Houston-based company co-founded by Berislav V. Zlokovic , professor and chair of the department of physiology and neuroscience at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Three of Zlokovic’s research papers have been retracted by the journal that published them because of problems with their data or images. Journals have issued corrections for seven more papers in which Zlokovic is the only common author, with one receiving a second correction after the new supplied data were found to have problems as well.

For an 11th paper co-authored by Zlokovic the journal Nature Medicine issued an expression of concern , a note journals append to articles when they have reason to believe there may be a problem with the paper but have not conclusively proven so. Since Zlokovic and his co-authors no longer had the original data for one of the questioned figures, the editors wrote, “[r]eaders are therefore alerted to interpret these results with caution.”

“It’s quite unusual to see this volume of retractions, corrections and expressions of concern, especially in high-tier influential papers,” said Dr. Matthew Schrag, an assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt who co-authored the whistleblower report independently of his work at the university.

Both Zlokovic and representatives for USC declined to comment, citing an ongoing review initiated in the wake of the allegations, which were first reported in the journal Science.

“USC takes any allegations of research integrity very seriously,” the university said in a statement. “Consistent with federal regulations and USC policies, this review must be kept confidential.”

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Zlokovic “remains committed to cooperating with and respecting that process, although it is unfortunately required due to allegations that are based on incorrect information and faulty premises,” his attorney Alfredo X. Jarrin wrote in an email.

Regarding the articles, “corrections and retractions are a normal and necessary part of the scientific post-publication process,” Jarrin wrote.

Authors of the whistleblower report and academic integrity experts challenged that assertion.

“If these are honest errors, then the authors should be able to show the actual original data,” said Elisabeth Bik , a microbiologist and scientific integrity consultant who co-wrote the whistleblower report. “It is totally human to make errors, but there are a lot of errors found in these papers. And some of the findings are suggestive of image manipulation.”

Given the staid pace of academic publishing, publishing this many corrections and retractions only a few months after the initial concerns were raised “is, bizarrely, pretty quick,” said Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch .

The whistleblower report submitted to NIH identified allegedly doctored images and data in 35 research papers in which Zlokovic was the sole common author.

“There had been rumblings about things not being reproducible [in Zlokovic’s research] for quite some time,” Schrag said. “The real motivation to speak publicly is that some of his work reached a stage where it was being used to justify clinical trials. And I think that when you have data that may be unreliable as the foundation for that kind of an experiment, the stakes are just so much higher. You’re talking about patients who are often at the most vulnerable medical moment of their life.”

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Over the years, Zlokovic has created several biotech companies aimed at commercializing his scientific work. In 2007, he co-founded ZZ Biotech , which has been working to gain federal approval of 3K3A-APC.

The drug is intended to minimize the bleeding and subsequent brain damage that can occur after an ischemic stroke, in which a blood clot forms in an artery leading to the brain.

In 2022, USC’s Keck School of Medicine received from NIH the first $4 million of a planned $30-million grant to conduct Phase III trials of the experimental stroke treatment on 1,400 people.

In Phase II of the trial, which was published in 2018 and called Rhapsody, six of the 66 patients who received 3K3A-APC died in the first week after their stroke, compared to one person among the 44 patients who got a placebo. Patients who received the drug also tended to report more disability 90 days after their stroke than those who got the placebo. The differences between the two groups were not statistically significant and could have been due to chance, and the death rate for patients in both groups evened out one month after the initial stroke.

“The statements that there is a risk in this trial is false,” said Patrick Lyden, a USC neurologist and stroke expert who was employed by Cedars-Sinai at the time of the trial. Zlokovic worked with Lyden as a co-investigator on the study.

One correction has been issued to the paper describing the Phase II results, fixing an extra line in a data table that shifted some numbers to the wrong columns. “This mistake is mine. It’s not anybody else’s. I didn’t catch it in multiple readings,” Lyden said, adding that he noticed the error and was already working on the correction when the journal contacted him about it.

He disputed that the trial represented any undue risk to patients.

“I believe it’s safe, especially when you consider that the purpose of Rhapsody was to find a dose — the maximum dose — that was tolerated by the patients without risk, and the Rhapsody trial succeeded in doing that. We did not find any dose that was too high to limit proceeding to Phase III. It’s time to proceed with Phase III.”

Schrag stressed that the whistleblowers did not find evidence of manipulated data in the report from the Phase II trial. But given the errors and alleged data manipulation in Zlokovic’s earlier work, he said, it’s appropriate to scrutinize a clinical trial that would administer the product of his research to people in life-threatening situations.

In the Phase II data, “there’s a coherent pattern of [patient] outcomes trending in the wrong direction. There’s a signal in early mortality … there’s a trend toward worse disability numbers” for patients who received the drug instead of a placebo, he said.

None are “conclusive proof of harm,” he said. But “when you’re seeing a red flag or a trend in the clinical trial, I would tend to give that more weight in the setting of serious ethical concerns around the pre-clinical data.”

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The NIH paused the clinical trial in November, and it remains on hold, said Dr. Pooja Khatr, principal investigator of the NIH StrokeNet National Coordinating Center. Khatr declined to comment on the pause or the trial’s future, referring further questions to USC and NIH.

The NIH Office of Extramural Research declined to discuss Rhapsody or Zlokovic, citing confidentiality regarding grant deliberations.

ZZ Biotech Chief Executive Kent Pryor, who in 2022 called the drug “a potential game-changer,” said he had no comment or information on the halted trial.

Zlokovic is a leading researcher on the blood-brain barrier, with particular interest in its role in stroke and dementia. He received his medical degree and doctorate in physiology at the University of Belgrade and joined the faculty at USC’s Keck School of Medicine after several fellowships in London. A polyglot and amateur opera singer , Zlokovic left USC and spent 11 years at the University of Rochester before returning in 2011 . He was appointed director of USC’s Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute the following year.

A USC spokesperson confirmed that Zlokovic has retained his titles as department chair and director of the Zilkha institute.

About this article

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Corinne Purtill is a science and medicine reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her writing on science and human behavior has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Time Magazine, the BBC, Quartz and elsewhere. Before joining The Times, she worked as the senior London correspondent for GlobalPost (now PRI) and as a reporter and assignment editor at the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. She is a native of Southern California and a graduate of Stanford University.

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