[gentle music] - Announcer: The Wisconsin School of the Air presents Robert S. Ellarson, University of Wisconsin Extension specialist in wildlife management in The Wonderful World of Nature.

This series of programs designed for in-school viewing by children in grades 5 through 9 is televised each Monday afternoon at 2 o'clock by University of Wisconsin Television.

Now, Robert Ellarson and The Wonderful World of Nature.

- Robert: This is a Cooper's hawk, boys and girls.

I'm sure that none of you had any difficulty in recognizing this particular animal as a bird.

Birds as a group of animals are remarkably similar.

All of them have wings, all birds have feathers, and all birds have bills and feet.

Today, boys and girls, we're going to be talking about the bills and feet of birds.

Because the bills and feet of birds are the one part of birds that show some remarkable differences or adaptations.

And we are interested in adaptations because they enable animals in general to live in different types of habitats or environment.

Now today, we're going to look at a group of birds with different types of adaptations of their bills and feet.

And the first bird we're going to look at today is one which you are all very familiar with, I am sure.

It's our friend the cardinal.

The cardinal is a typical songbird.

One of the adaptations of the cardinal is this heavy conical bill.

This heavy bill of the cardinal enables this bird to feed on hard seeds, and it can crack these hard seeds and get at the kernel inside of the seed.

One other thing that we want to look at as far as this cardinal is concerned is the feet.

Notice that the feet of the cardinal are adapted to perching, perching on twigs and on branches.

Many of our songbirds have this particular adaptation.

Some of the other songbirds which are adapted to perching and which have bills similar to the cardinal are the sparrows and the finches and the grosbeaks.

There are still other birds in this group of perching birds which do not feed on hard seeds.

Rather, they are birds which feed on insect life.

One of the very common birds which feeds on insects is a little bird known that we call a warbler.

There are many different kinds of warblers, and the month of May is a very good time of the year to see these brightly-colored little birds passing through our state.

We usually see them high in the tops of trees, hopping about, picking up insects from the leaves and the twigs in the tree tops.

Now, the bill of the warbler is adapted to feeding on insects.

It is a very long, slender bill.

Notice how sharp it is.

It is a type of bill which is very well-suited to picking insects off of the leaves of the trees.

The feet of the little warblers too are very similar to those of the cardinal because it too is a perching bird.

Now, there are still other birds which feed on insects, and one of the birds that feeds on insects finds these insects beneath the bark of trees and sometimes even in the wood of trees.

And I'm sure that all of you know what bird I am speaking about now.

How many of you know?

Well, let's go and take a look at the bird that I am referring to.

It is a woodpecker.

This is a downy woodpecker.

One of the very common woodpeckers in Wisconsin.

I'm sorry, boys and girls, this is not a downy, but a hairy woodpecker.

We saw this bird in our program last time, if you will recall.

Now, the woodpecker has several adaptations both of its bill and of its feet.

And if you will come over to the blackboard, I'll point out these adaptations to you.

The bill of the woodpecker is not sharp.

Rather, it is rather square on the end.

As a matter of fact, it looks something like a chisel.

If we look at it from the side, it is square.

However, if we look at the bill of the bird from the top, we find that it is very sharp and pointed.

In other words, it is shaped just exactly like a wood chisel.

And, of course, this enables the bird to peck down through the bark and into the wood of the trees and find the insects that it needs for food.

If we take a look at the feet of the woodpecker, we find some interesting adaptations there too.

A typical bird's foot has three toes pointing forward and one pointing back.

This is the typical pattern in a perching bird's foot.

In the case of the woodpecker, we find one of these four toes more or less rotated around so that it points almost backwards.

In other words, the woodpecker has two toes pointing forward and two pointing backward.

And this adaptation enables the bird to grasp the trunk of the tree and hold on as it digs into the bark.

So both the bill and the feet of the woodpecker are adapted to its way of life.

Now, there are still other birds which feed on insects.

And the bird that I am thinking about now is a bird that is a very, very excellent flyer.

And it catches the insects that it feeds on on the wing.

It feeds exclusively on flying insects.

How many of you know what bird I am referring to now?

Well, there are a number of birds in this category, but I am thinking particularly of the swallows.

We have a number of different kinds of swallows in Wisconsin.

This little skin that I have here is the skin of a cliff swallow.

Notice that the bill of this swallow is quite short in comparison to the bill of the warbler.

However, the bill of the swallow extends quite a distance back into the side of the bird's head.

Now, these bill, these birds are very small and do not show up too well on television.

So you will have to look closely.

Notice the bill extends clear back into the side of the bird's head.

So that when the bird opens its mouth, its mouth is very large, and it enables these birds to snap up the insects out of the air as they skim about.

The feet of the swallow are also interesting because the feet of the swallow are very small in proportion to the rest of the bird.

They are very short, and when we do see swallows on the ground, they hop about very awkwardly because their feet are so small.

Actually, the home of the swallow is in the air.

Now, turning from these birds which are more at home in the air than they are on the ground, we can go to a group of birds which are more at home on the ground than they are any other place.

And birds which are typical of this group are the grouse.

And the specimen that we have here today is a sharp-tailed grouse.

This is typical of many of our ground-dwelling game birds.

This bird belongs to the same family of birds that the chickens belong to.

Notice that its bill is quite chicken-like and also its feet are quite chicken-like.

They are strong feet and enable the bird to run about the ground with a great deal of speed.

Now, one of the interesting things about the feet of the grouse is the fact that in the wintertime, grouse grow snowshoes.

They are birds, most of them of the north country.

And in the wintertime, when there is deep snow on the ground, these birds continue to live on the ground.

And nature has provided them with a special adaptation.

If we examine the feet of a grouse in the wintertime, we find that along the sides of the toes, there are a series of little comb-like projections.

Grow out only in the wintertime.

And these comb-like projections increase the surface of the foot by almost twice.

And so, these birds can walk about right on the surface of the snow without sinking in, and so are much better adapted to their environment.

Now, let us go back to our friend the Cooper's hawk.

This bird belongs to a group of birds called the raptors.

It's spelled R-A-P-T-O-R-S.

The raptors are birds which kill their own food.

They live on other animals, and this group of birds includes both the hawks and the owls.

And this Cooper's hawk is a very good example of a raptor.

All raptors have certain adaptations in common.

The bills of raptors are short and very powerful, and have a hook on the end of them.

This hooked beak of the raptors enables the animals to tear the flesh of their prey, and to enable them to tear it from the bones and eat it.

Going to the feet of the raptors, you can see that the feet are equipped with very long, extremely sharp claws.

These claws are just like needles, and these strong feet of the raptors are the tools with which these animals kill their prey.

Most raptors do not use their beak in killing animals.

Rather, they depend on the sharp talons or claws.

And these are some of the adaptations of this interesting group of birds.

Now, going from the raptors, we can refer to still another bird which has a very specialized food.

This bird lives almost entirely on earthworms.

It's a bird which makes its home in the brushy marshes and the wet woodlands of Wisconsin.

And they usually return to our state along in March.

It's a marsh, it's a migratory bird, and the bird I'm referring to is the woodcock.

The woodcock is a game bird.

In other words, it's hunted in the fall of the year, for sport and for food.

The woodcock has one of the longest bills of any of our birds in proportion to its size.

Notice the very long, probe-like, porpoise-like bill of this bird.

This is a special adaptation that it has for obtaining its food, the earthworms.

This bird runs its beak clear down into the ground to a depth of two inches or more and locates the earthworms.

And one of the very striking adaptations of this bill is that the very tip of this bill can open up and grasp an earthworm and pull it out of the ground for the bird to feed on.

The woodcock has rather small, weak feet.

And as a result, the woodcock is usually found in areas that have very little ground cover.

It is a bird that prefers open ground, the bare ground beneath the tufts of marsh grass and beneath the brush in the marshes and wet woods.

Last of all, boys and girls, I'd like to turn to a group of birds which I'm sure all of you are very, very familiar with.

They are birds that we call waterfowl.

And in particular, we want to talk about ducks today.

Ducks, of course, are birds which live very close to water.

They spend much of their time on the water.

And the one thing that all ducks have in common is webbed feet.

This is a typical wild duck.

And you can see these very large webbed feet.

These webbed feet enable the bird to walk on soft, marshy ground, and they also enable the bird to swim in the water.

They are very efficient paddles, but not all ducks feed on the same type of food.

Some ducks depend on different types of food.

And of course, as one might expect, they have certain adaptations or specializations of their bill which enables them to obtain these special types of food.

One of the interesting ducks which has a special type of food is a bird we call the shoveler.

And, or sometimes, it's called a spoon bill.

You will notice that the bill is very broad and spoon-shaped.

This bird feeds on seeds and on insects, which it finds in the mud and the ooze of the bottoms of lakes and rivers.

If we look closely at this bill, we can see that along the edge of the bill, there are a series of little fine tooth-like strainer.

And these little strainers help the bird to obtain its food.

The bird squeezes the mud through its bill, and the seeds and little insects are retained in the bird's mouth, and it swallows them.

Still another duck which has a specialized bill is the duck called a merganser.

There are several kinds of mergansers, but one of the other names for mergansers is fish ducks.

These birds, as the name implies, live on fish.

And their bill is very, very specialized for this particular type of food.

If we look at the bill of a merganser, we find that it is much narrower than the bill of a shoveler.

It is almost round and very slender.

And along the edges of the bill are a series of very sharp teeth.

All of these teeth point back towards the back of the duck's mouth, and on the tip of the bill is quite a decided hook.

These are adaptations which enable this duck to capture fish beneath the surface of the water and hold onto these slippery fish and bring them to the surface, where they are eaten by the bird.

These are just two of the very interesting adaptations of ducks' bills.

And certainly, the whole world of nature, all of the birds show different types of adaptations of both their bills and their feet.

So today, we have seen how some of these adaptations of birds' bills and feet enable them to live in their chosen environment and to live a successful life in these areas.

And that's all for now, boys and girls, so long.

[gentle music] - Announcer: Each Monday afternoon at 2 o'clock, the Wisconsin School of the Air presents Robert S. Ellarson, University of Wisconsin Extension specialist in wildlife management in The Wonderful World of Nature.

This series of programs is designed for in-school viewing by children in grades 5 through 9.

Next Monday at 2 o'clock, our television classroom will again view The Wonderful World of Nature.

We invite you to join us then.