Greater Sydney Parklands

Bird beaks

Explore how different bird beaks are shaped for specific purposes. Understand how these structural adaptations help birds find and eat different types of food.

Spoonbill bird

Structural adaptations for survival

Australia is home to a wide variety of birds that have adaptations to survive in different environments. While all birds have feathers and most birds can fly, birds vary a lot in their size, shape, and colour. Birds also have lots of different beaks and the beak of each type of bird is a structural adaptation to help the bird to pick up and eat the food it needs to survive.

Animal beaks are made from a protein called ‘keratin’ which is the same as the chemical in human hair. Although we might mainly think of a beak as being a bird’s mouth for eating, a bird’s beak can also be used to build a nest, poke holes in the side of a tree, feed chicks, and talk to other birds.

Here are a few of the common adaptations of beaks in different birds:

 

  • Close up of yellow tail black cockatoo side profile
    Parrot beak for crunching and climbing. The yellow-tailed black cockatoo has a strong, curved beak for cracking open seeds. They nest in tree hollows and use their beaks to hold on and climb tree branches.
  • Close up of New Holland Honeyeater bird side profile
    Honeyeater beak for sipping nectar. The New Holland honeyeater feeds on the nectar from plants and its long beak can reach deep down into flowers to sip on the sugary nectar. It can also snack on small insects and spiders with its beak.
  • Kookaburra on branch looking at camera
    Kookaburra beak for catching prey. The carnivorous kookaburra eats small animals, including lizards, worms, large insects, and small mammals. It uses its strong, sharp beak to catch, kill, and chow down on its prey.
  • Duck swimming in pond
    Duck bills for watery food. One feature of the broad and flat bill of a duck is that it can act like a sieve, to filter food out of the water.

Activities

Activity: Bird beak adaptations

Create a challenge to match bird beaks with the food they eat

  1. Working in groups of 3, search online to find five pictures of birds with different beaks and research the food they eat.  
     
  2. Create a challenge for another group to complete. The challenge is to match the bird beaks with the food the bird eats. For example, this can be done by drawing pictures on pieces of paper, creating a worksheet, or using a computer to make a matching puzzle.  
     
  3. Ask another group to test out your challenge and see if they can match the beaks to the food the birds eat

     
Activity: Bird beak challenge

Model bird beak adaptations and investigate how well they pick up food found on the ground

Materials: Tools to use as model bird beaks (for example: tweezers, straws, toothpicks, bamboo skewers, bulldog clips, spoons, forks, clothes pegs etc.), stopwatch for timing the challenge, paper bags or similar for collecting plant material

Safety: The teacher should assess the risks of conducting this activity, including checking the outdoor area for hazards, considering any student allergies, and making sure students wash their hands after the activity.

Part 1: Testing bird beaks

  1. Go outside to an area with lots of plants growing and where there is plant material that has fallen on the ground, including sticks, leaves, seeds, and bark.
     
  2. Each student is given one tool to use as a bird beak and one paper bag for collecting plant material.  
     
  3. Students are challenged to use their beak tool to pick up plant material off the ground.  
     
  4. When the teacher starts the stopwatch and says ‘GO!’, students use their bird beak tool to collect as many pieces of plant material as they can and place them in their bag, before the teacher says ‘STOP!’ after 2 minutes.

Important rule: Students must only use their tool to pick up items. They must not touch the items with their hands! 
 

Part 2: Bird beak results

This part of the activity can be done in a shady outdoor area or in the classroom.

Materials: bird beak tools, bags of collected plant material, pencils and paper or computers for making a table of the class results

  1. Each student looks at the plant material collected in their bag and writes down the types of plant materials and the number of each type of plant material.  
    For example: 3 leaves, 4 pieces of bark, 1 gumnut.
     
  2. Create a table that lists the beak tools in the first column and each of the different types of plant material in the top row.  
     
  3. Tally the student results for each type of beak tool.
     
  4. Discuss the results, noting which tools were best for collecting each type of plant material.  
     
  5. Students write a sentence to explain the results for the tool they used and share their conclusions with the rest of the class. 

     
References

Images 1-5: Centennial Parklands