How do birds fly?

Bird

Most birds are well suited for flying.  First of all, a bird has feathers and wings, and powerful muscles in its breast with which to flat them.  A bird’s body is streamlined to other little air resistance. Its bones are light in weight. Many of them are hollow and filled with air. 

When a bird beats its wings downward, it produces a lifting force that holds the bird in the air.  As the wings flap downward to flight, the long wingtip feathers twist and push against the air, moving the bird forward.  The bird uses its tail feathers as a brake and as a rudder for steering. – Dick Rogers

What is a called blooded animal?

Cold Blooded Animal

Many animals such as fish, frogs, snakes and lizards are often called “cold-blooded,” as opposed to “warm-blooded” mammals and birds.  

This does not mean their blood is always cold.  Unlike warm-blooded animals, they do not have built-in temperature controls that keep their bodies evenly warmed.

Instead, their body temperature is usually near that of the surrounding air or water air or water.  The cold-blooded animal is hot in hot weather, and cold in cold weather.  

Many depend on the sun for their body heat. Lizards, for example bask in the sun to warm their bodies.-Dick Rogers

Why are some birds more brightly colored than others?

Color makes some birds stand out and helps to hide other birds. Though there are a great many things in nature that we can explain, we can only guess why some things are as they are.

One idea – and there are many exceptions – is that birds with brighter colors spend most of their time in place where their bright colors make them stand out, so they can easily be seen by other birds of their own kind.

Birds with duller colors live mostly on or near the ground.  Their dull-colored feathers match the grass and leaves of their surroundings and make them hard to see.  This protects them from enemies.

This may also be why nature gave the duller colors to most female birds.  Since she must sit on the nest to hatch the eggs, the mother bird must be better hidden.

A male bird may court his mate by singing and displaying his flashing colors, in order to persuade the quiet little female that he is the finest bird in the world.

During the nesting time, he perches on a limb some distance from the nest.  With his bright colors, he draws all the attention to himself, and away from the nest and young ones.-Dick Rogers

How do birds chew their food?

Birds don’t have teeth to chew with.  They grind their food up in their gizzards.

If you own a pet canary or live near a chicken farm then you may already know that birds have a very strange way of chewing their food.  Birds must swallow their food whole because they have no teeth to chew with.

Instead, the work of “chewing” is done by the gizzard, a special part of the bird’s stomach that grinds the food up.

Some birds that eat seeds and other hard food swallow small stones and gravel.  These pass into the gizzard with the food.  The strong muscles of the gizzard grind the gravel and food together.

The stones and gravel crush the hard seeds and help the bird digest the food.  It is sometimes easy to tell the kind of food a bird eats by the shape of its bill.  They chisel bill of the woodpecker is used to dig insects out of wood.

The long, spear-like bill of the heron is ideal for jabbing fish and frogs. Finches and cardinals have short, strong bills for cracking hard shells of seeds.  And a hawk has a sharp hooked bill that is good for tearing apart the animals it catches for food. – Dick Rogers