Why do birds have different beaks? Today we found out!

 We did a small activity to help us understand.

I put various items into containers: popcorn kernels, rice, beads, peanuts, dry pasta, bird seed, crackers, dried berries

I asked the kids to use chopsticks and popsicle sticks to try and pick up the objects. We recorded beforehand, what we thought would be easier to pick up and with what instrument.

We compared our hypothesis to what we were able to do with the two different sticks. As you can guess some things were easier with the popsicle sticks than the chopsticks.

We were able to show that God designed the various beaks ( the proper way to say it is 'bills' ) according to what a bird eats. There are short thin bills for insect eaters, short thick bills for seed eaters, long thin bills for probing flowers for nectar or soft mud for worms, & strong hooked bills for tearing meat.

Jayda's notebooking page

~ A few 'bill' facts ~

Birds do not chew their food, they use their bills to tear chunks off or to crush lumpy items before swallowing them.

The longest bill in the world belongs to the Australian Pelican. My kids said, 'Like on Finding Nemo.' Ok yes, we watched it over and over when it first came out.

The Sword-billed Hummingbird has a bill longer than the rest of its body.

A birds bill continues to grow throughout the birds life, this is necessary to replace the wearing that occurs at the tips.

Food isn't the only role that the bill has a part in. The Puffin's bill grows a set of colorful scales during the spring to help attract a mate. After, these scales are lost again making the bill duller and lighter. Isn't that interesting?! Hmm......here darlin, I grew some colorful scales just for you. I'm glad God didn't make us to do that. *snicker, snicker*

I honestly never thought about the various bills out there until gathering the info to do this study. I got to thinking, man, if people would study nature, study His marvelous works, there would be no doubt there is an Awesome Creator. How creative, how ingenious is our God?! Super amazing......and all we have to do is take a longer look at the world around us to see that.