Pelicans have pouched beaks, used as nets for scooping up fish. Hummingbirds' beaks protect their long tubular tongues, with which the birds extract nectar from flowers. Swallows and whippoorwills use their wide, gaping beaked mouths to catch flying insects in mid-air. Cardinals and grosbeaks have short, cone-shaped beaks for cracking open seeds. Snipes have long beaks for probing in mud and water to find worms and other small animals.
Woodpeckers have chisel-like beaks for searching under tree bark to find insects.
Yellowbellied sapsuckers have drill-like beaks for boring into trees to feed on sap and the insects attracted to it. All animals are adapted to their environment in unique ways. A very important adaptation for food gathering in birds is the size and shape of the beak. In this activity, we will focus on different types of bird beaks and discover how each type of beak functions in collecting specific types of food. A class discussion on specialization of each beak type should follow.