While secretly delivering the birds to Mitch's home, Melanie is attacked by a seagull. As the weekend presses on, the attacks on the town grow in frequency, and the number of birds swells to biblical proportions. The townspeople grow suspicious of Melanie, since the attacks coincide with her arrival in town. As the movie progresses toward its disastrous ending, tempers flare and tensions rise as everyone tries to understand why the birds have taken their anger out on their idyllic town. One interesting side note - for all the seagulls, crows, black birds and finches on the set, there is not one drop of bird poop throughout the entire movie.
Truth be told, it's better that way.
I suppose it's hard to concentrate on saving your own neck when you're worrying about being a moving target for a bunch of angry birds with chips on their shoulders. Hitchcock used master craftsman Albert Whitlock to create some amazing matte paintings, that are seamlessly blended into shots of Bodega Bay and sets on the back lot of Universal Studios. At times, it really is hard to tell which sequences are effect shots and which are the real deal. Hitchcock chose to forego the usual instrumental score and instead went with the use of emerging keyboard technology to create a soundtrack of bird calls, cries, and wing-flapping that really get under the viewer's skin. The effects track is very much tied into the movie in a way that musical scores sometimes aren't.