Bird Anatomy: Bills and Feet

Birds’ bills (beaks) and feet are highly specialized largely due to the birds lack of arms and hands. Bills and feet perform many functions other animals do with their forelimbs—reach, grasp, pick-up, manipulate food, climb, carry. You could probably figure out what niche in the environment a particular bird occupies and what type of food it eats simply by observing its bill and feet.

BILLS
Birds’ bills have different shapes to help them reach for, pick up, and manipulate things, especially food, as the need arises. Consider the bill shape and food source of a few well known birds—eagle, hummingbird, cardinal, woodpecker, nuthatch. Eagles, like most raptors, have large, hooked bills adapted for tearing apart their prey, which in the case of the bald eagle is usually fish. Hummingbirds have a long, narrow, straw-like bill for sipping nectar from trumpet shaped flowers and hummingbird feeders. The cardinals heavy, conical bill is perfectly shaped for cracking open large seeds. The woodpecker’s long, heavy bill allows it to excavate cavities for nesting and probe into tree bark crevices looking for insect prey. Nuthatches also use their slightly upturned bill to search for insects in the bark of trees as they climb down the tree headfirst!

FEET
The feet, especially the toes, can tell you a lot about birds. If ducks and geese didn’t have webbed toes how would they propel themselves through the water? The talons of birds of prey, like the eagle, help them catch their prey and hold on to it while they eat it. Check out the feet of the birds at your feeders—most backyard birds have three toes facing forwards and one toe facing back. But look at the woodpeckers feet, why do you suppose it has two toes facing front and two facing back? This toe configuration allows the woodpecker to balance and climb up and down the bark of trees.

The next time you get a close-up look at a bird in your backyard, see if you can figure out where it lives and what it eats just by the shape of its bill and feet!