The main purpose for a bird's beak is to obtain food in
the easiest and most effective way possible.
Sifting, sucking, cracking, crushing, spearing, tearing, picking, probing--these are just a few of the things birds can do with their beaks.
A bird's beak or bill is actually is a part of its skull that is covered with a tough layer of skin. Although some birds use their beaks to defend their territories, gather nesting materials or to weave a nest, the main purpose of the beak is to obtain food in the easiest and most effective way possible.
Can you imagine an eagle trying to eat a mouse using a duck's bill? That would be ridiculous. Rather, eagles, hawks and other raptors have strong,sharp, hooked beaks designed for tearing prey apart. A duck's bill, on the other hand is flattened with tooth-like edges for straining food out of water.
Hummingbirds feed on flower nectar and are attracted to red, tube-shaped flowers. Consequently, they need a beak that can fit into those flowers. Humming bird beaks are long and slender and work like straws to suck nectar out of flowers. Seed-eating birds, such as cardinals, have short, thick beaks enabling them to break seeds open as easily as a nutcracker. Some birds have frail beaks that would break if they tried to crack open a hard seed. However they have big mouths that more than make up for their weak beaks. Purple martins and whip-poor-wills use their oversized mouths to catch insects while in flight. Their mouths are not much different than an insect net.
Woodpeckers eat insects, too, but these birds don't catch insects in the air. They prefer to drill holes in to trees and use their extremely long tongues to get the insects out. Because woodpeckers are always hitting their heads against a tree, they require a skull and a beak that is designed to take a beating.
The woodcock has a really strange beak which it uses to feel and probe for earthworms The top half of the woodcock's beak bends and is sensitive to touch.
There are as many different kinds of bird beaks as there are birds. And, in addition to sifting, sucking, cracking, crushing, spearing, tearing picking and probing, bird beaks can help us to identify birds, the food they eat and the habitats they live in.
Look around the house to compare other tools to bird beaks. What birds have beaks that work like chisels, hammers or tongs? Use your imaginations to design an imaginary bird with a beak that works like a fly swatter or some other tool.
Kathy Cavender, once a science teacher, is a naturalist at the Conservation Department's Runge Conservation Nature Center in Jefferson City.
The whippoorwill (beak one) catches flying insects such as mosquitoes with its beak. The red-bellied woodpecker (beak two) uses its beak to drill hole in trees where it can reach insect like ants and beetle larvae with it spear-like tongue. The woodcock (beak three) probes soft soil with its long beak in the search for worms. The cardinal (beak four) uses its beak to crack tough seeds.
Reprinted with permission from the February 1995 issue of the Missouri Conservationist.
Content revision: 20040618
