🔎 Species ID & Natural History · 6 min
Birds: anatomy, feeding and defense
Why this matters
Bird anatomy shows up on the exam and, more importantly, in your hands. Knowing which end is dangerous and which structures exist prevents injuries to both of you.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to
- Distinguish raptor groups and their defenses
- Identify anatomical structures unique to certain birds
- Connect feeding style to captive diet
Structures
- The crop is an enlarged area of the esophagus just above where the neck joins the body, for temporary food storage. Hawks have one; owls do not.
- The proventriculus is the glandular part of a bird's stomach that partly digests food before it reaches the gizzard, the muscular part that grinds it.
- The keel is the protruding part of the breastbone where the large flight muscles attach. It is how you assess body condition.
- The cere is the fleshy base of the upper mandible in raptors and pigeons.
- The uropygial gland is the oil gland above the base of the tail.
- A pellet or cast is the roundish mass of bone and fur regurgitated by raptors.
Groups worth knowing
Accipiters are short-winged, long-tailed woodland hawks that eat mostly other birds: goshawk, Cooper's hawk, sharp-shinned hawk. The American kestrel is a falcon, not an accipiter. Raptor simply means bird of prey. Passerines are the perching birds, order Passeriformes, roughly 5,100 species and the largest order of birds.
Which end bites
- Raptors: the feet and beak are the weapons, and the feet come first.
- New world vultures (turkey vulture): unlike raptors, they defend with the beak, so control the head first. They also regurgitate foul material as a defense, which is normal, not poisoning.
- Herons, egrets, bitterns, loons, cormorants: long necks and stabbing beaks aimed instinctively at your face. Eye protection is mandatory.
Feeding style tells you the diet
Swifts and swallows feed on the wing on flying insects, which makes them demanding to hand-raise. Woodpeckers and doves do not gape for food the way passerines do, so a bird that will not gape may simply be a species that never does, or it may be hypothermic or ill.
This lesson is part of the NY Wildlife Rehabilitator Exam course. Open it in the course to answer the retrieval checks that go with it, track what you have read, and quiz the whole unit. Lessons, quizzes and the glossary are free.