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by Kate Woodford

This week, I’m looking at our feathered friends (=birds) and the language that we use to refer to different parts of them and to the things that they do.

I’ll start with the head. The hard, pointed part of a bird’s mouth is generally called the beak. If this part is flat and wide, as we see on a duck, we may instead call it a bill:

The bird reappeared with a fish in its beak.

It jabbed at the other gull with its bill.

When a bird uses its beak to eat or make a hole in something, often with repeated, fast movements of its neck, we say it pecks or pecks at something. When it uses its beak to clean or arrange its feathers, it preens:

Two birds pecked at the crumbs under the table.

She watched a blackbird preening in the birdbath.

The two flat parts of the body that a bird uses for flying are its wings. If a bird beats/flaps its wings, or its wings beat/flap, they move rapidly up and down to allow the bird to fly:

A pair of birds shot past, their wings beating at great speed.

A bird that floats on air currents instead of flapping its wings is said to glide:

Two birds of prey were gliding high above.

The soft, light things that cover a bird’s body are called feathers and when we talk about the covering of feathers on a bird’s body, especially in relation to its colour or pattern, we use the word plumage. The very small, soft feathers that are found under the long, outer feathers (and also on very young birds) are referred to as down. The small group of long feathers found on top of some birds’ heads is called a crest.

These birds, with their distinctive black and white plumage, are now rare.

The baby birds were covered in down.

The male has a showy yellow crest on its head.

We generally use the words ‘foot’ and ‘toe’ for the parts of the body that the bird stands on, but the sharp, curved nail at the end of each toe is a claw. When these claws are very long and sharp on a bigger bird, especially a bird of prey, we often call them talons:

The eagle flew off with the fish dangling in its talons.

If a bird lands and sits somewhere that is not the ground, we say it perches there:

A robin flew down and perched on the back of the chair.

The structure that birds build to put their eggs in is called a nest. We use this as a verb too, meaning ‘make a nest’ or ‘stay in a nest’:

There’s a bird’s nest in the higher branches of the tree.

Swallows are nesting in the barn.

When birds produce eggs from their bodies, we say they lay eggs and when baby birds (chicks) come out of the eggs, they hatch. (We also say that eggs hatch when they break and allow chicks to come out.)

The eggs were laid last week but they haven’t hatched yet.

Finally, birds that travel to a different part of the world when the season changes are said to migrate. The noun is migration:

In September, they migrate to warmer climes.

She studies bird migration.

That concludes my post on bird words. If you would like to add any words to this set, do feel free to comment below.