Impress your friends and family with your newfound bird knowledge.
Did you know flamingoes are pink on the inside as well as the outside? Or how about the wild bird that’s over 70 years old?
And have you ever wondered why woodpeckers don’t get concussion from their never-ending pecking?
We’ve rounded up some of the most extraordinary facts about birds and their fascinating world…..
32 amazing facts about birds
1. It typically takes 20–60 minutes for birds to lay an egg, though there are exceptions says Mike Toms. Geese and turkeys take significantly longer, while many nest parasites are able to lay incredibly quickly. Cuckoos for example average just 10 seconds
2. Emperor penguins can dive to depths of hundreds of metres. Penguins are able to dive so deep because of unique adaptions to their cardiovascular system. As they prepare to dive their heart starts to race and the penguin hyperventilates, which primes its muscles with oxygen. Then it dives in and does something, well, breathtaking: it cuts off the blood supply to its muscles to conserve dissolved oxygen for the rest of its body.
3. Some birds, individuals and species, are monogamous and mate for life. Examples include mute swans, black vultures, albatrosses and puffins
4. Flamingoes are pink on the inside as well as the outside. Their pinkness is caused by the presence of carotenoid pigments found in the algae and crustaceans that make up the diet of a flamingo. Though the pink coloration is most obvious in a flamingo’s plumage, the carotenoids also impregnate the bird’s tissues, skin, blood and even egg yolk.
5. Humans are to blame for at least 600 bird extinctions – causing untold damage to ecosystems. Human interference in nature has not only caused the extinction of hundreds of bird species but has also caused fundamental changes in the roles that birds play in the global environment.
6. The oldest wild bird in the world is widely thought to be the rather remarkable Laysan albatross known as Wisdom, who lives on the Midway Atoll in the North Pacific Ocean and is now estimated to be in her early to mid seventies.
7. Vast numbers of fast-moving birds are able to fly in close proximity to each other and co-ordinate changes of direction thanks to their sensory systems that detect position and movement accurately, and on rapid responses that co-ordinate directional changes. Physicists studying starling flocks in Rome discovered each bird monitors its position by interacting with a sample of neighbours at varying distances.
8. When it slams its beak into a tree in search of grubs, a woodpecker experiences g-forces twenty times what would likely lead to traumatic brain injuries in humans. And it does it 12,000 times a day, day after day, without as much as a headache. It survives the experience with its marbles intact because of a remarkable tongue, which works as a safety belt for the braincase. Other features of the skull that prevent brain damage include shock absorbers at the base of the beak that cushion the brain from the impact forces.
9. Some birds have a sense of self awareness. If you looked into a mirror and thought your reflection was somebody else, you’d fail the mirror test. To recognise that the image was you, you’d have to understand that ‘you’ are a being. You’d be self-aware. And when some bird species were tested the magpie and the domestic pigeon passed, while parrots, jackdaws and carrion crows failed.
10. Birds don’t sweat and do not have sweat glands, so to stay cool they evaporate water through their respiratory tract. Watch a bird on a hot summer’s day and you may see it panting or, in some species, rapidly moving the floor of its mouth (termed a ‘gular flutter’).
11. Birds don’t pee as they need to stay as light as possible. Among their myriad adaptations to do so is the design of their excretory system. Producing pee as well as poo, as mammals do, means you’re going to be retaining urine (which consists of nitrogen-rich urea diluted with lots of water) in a bladder. This isn’t very helpful if you are trying to keep your weight down. So, instead of excreting waste matter as both urine and faeces, birds (with the exception of the ostrich) ditch their waste in one go through an opening called the cloaca.
12. The strongest bird in the world is the black wheatear, which lives on the cliffs and rocky slopes of Iberia and western North Africa. This small insectivorous bird would get the gold in the bird weightlifting Olympics! The males decorate the outside of their nest holes, and sometimes their nests, with stones, some of which can weigh up to two-thirds of their bodyweight according to research.
13. Bird beaks not get much longer than the aptly-named swordbilled hummingbird. This bird’s amazing beak, which can reach lengths of about 12cm, is longer than its body, allowing it to access nectar from the longest, thinnest blooms that other hummingbird beaks can’t reach.
This extraordinary beak earned the swordbilled hummingbird the title of longest bird beak and a place on our weirdest birds list and our weirdest bird beak list
14. The smallest bird in the world is the bee hummingbird, which clocks in at just 5.5cm in length (for males, females are slightly larger at around 6.1 cm). This also makes them the smallest warm-blooded vertebrate.
15. The loudest bird in the world is the male white bellbird, a curious Amazonian species that produces an ear-splitting sound something like the two-tone horn of a fast train approaching a station.
16. It’s not just parrots that can talk. Starlings, mynahs, Australian magpies, lyrebirds, bowerbirds and corvids can all mimic human speech. Even a captive Australian musk duck hit the news in 2021 when it was recorded saying “You bloody fool”.
17. There’s a bird that can walk on water – sort of! Jacanas possess preposterously long toes relative to body size that spread the birds’ weight, enabling them to walk on floating vegetation, such as lilypads, without sinking. This talent has earned them the nickname ‘lily trotters’.
18. In 1932, Australia declared war on 20,000 emus – – and lost.
19. The biggest bird of prey is the Andean Condor . With a wingspan (for the record) maxing out at around 3.2m, and weighing up to 15kg the Andean condor is also the heaviest bird of prey in the world and the raptor with the longest wingspan. It also stands an impressive 1.2 metres tall.
20. The heaviest flying bird is the kori bustard, which can weigh from 11–19kg. The kori bustard lives in eastern and southern Africa, and can live for over 30 years. Because of its tremendous weight, a kori bustard uses a lot of energy to fly, so it will only take off when necessary.
21. Bird poo is white because it contain materials from the excretory (uterine) and alimentary (faces) systems, a result of the two emptying into the cloaca, where the reproductive system also has an opening. Whereas the faces contain undigested food remains, and so tend to reflect the diet in general composition, the urine is responsible for the white appearance seen in many bird droppings.
22. The most intelligent bird is the grey parrots. Grey parrots can not only talk, count and dance in rhythm, but according to new research that uses nothing more complicated than a couple of cups and a piece of walnut, they also have the reasoning abilities of a three-year-old child.
23. Although there are a few birds that enter a state of suspended animation that is called ‘torpor’, there is only one bird that is known to be a true hibernator: North America’s common poorwill. This beautifully camouflaged nocturnal bird is a relative of the nightjar found in Britain, and in winter often hibernates among rocks. It can slash its oxygen intake by 90 per cent, while its body temperature plummets to 5°C, barely registering signs of life.
24. A chicken once lived for 18 months without a head. When a chicken’s head is chopped off, the severed nerves send impulses to the muscles of the legs and wings, which can cause the remainder of the bird to run around in a flap.
Usually this lasts seconds, but in 1945 in the US, a bird dubbed ‘Miracle Mike the Headless Chicken’ famously lived 18 months after its head was removed.
25. The (aptly named) bohemian waxwing gorges on so many fermented rowan berries in winter that it gets a tad tipsy and is unable to fly or even walk in a straight line.
26. Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards, a skill which comes in handy when feeding on the nectar of plants and insects.
27. The Arctic tern has the longest migration journey in the world. After breeding in the far north, it heads to the opposite end of the globe to enjoy the southern hemisphere’s summer. As the crow flies, this would be 12,000km each way, but the terns take a more meandering route. One tagged individual clocked nearly 97,000km for the round trip.
28. Some albatrosses are lesbians. When males are scarce, the female Laysan albatrosses of Hawaii will partner up to raise young. Young females tend to be the adventurous ones, whereas males remain at their birth colony, which leaves fresh colonies with a shortage of males. Being a single parent is not an option, however so these innovative females have adapted by soliciting another albatross’ husband as sperm donor, then partnering with a female to raise the chick.
29. Birds can count the number of eggs in their nest. Most birds sense when their clutch is complete via tactile stimulation of their brood patch, the featherless area on their bellies that warms the eggs. But there is evidence that some bird species count their eggs by sight.
30. Did you know there are poisonous birds? In fact there’s a few of them. Birds were the last major group of vertebrates in which poison or venom was identified by scientists, though local people had long known that some birds taste foul and cause numbness if handled. Poisonous bird species include the hooded pitohui and the blue-capped ifrita – and ornithologists think there may be more poisonous birds out there.
31. The bird with the biggest beak, relative to body size, is the toco toucan, whose gaudy beak accounts for up to a third of its body surface area.
32. Male birds don’t have penises, or rather 97% don’t. This inevitably means that sperm cannot be deposited within the body of a female. Instead, when a male bird mounts a female, sperm is transferred by what is known as a ‘cloacal kiss’, which may last only a few seconds. The female then draws the sperm up into her reproductive tract to fertilise her eggs.