12 bird facts that sound fake (but are true)
A bird that flies for months without landing, an owl that cannot move its eyes and birds that make milk. Twelve true bird facts that sound made up.
Choose your practice guideExplore birds by region1. Some swifts stay in the air for months
Tracking studies of Common Swifts show birds that stayed airborne for up to ten months outside the breeding season. They eat, drink and even sleep on the wing.
2. One godwit flew 13,560 km without stopping
In 2022 a young Bar-tailed Godwit tagged in Alaska flew nonstop to Tasmania, about 13,560 kilometres, in around eleven days. It is the longest nonstop flight ever recorded for a bird.
3. Arctic Terns see two summers a year
They breed in the far north and spend the northern winter near Antarctica. A round trip can add up to roughly 70,000 kilometres.
4. Hummingbirds can fly backwards
Hummingbirds are the only birds that can hover for a long time and fly backwards, thanks to wings that rotate in a figure-eight pattern.
5. Owls cannot move their eyes
Their tube-shaped eyes are fixed in the skull. To look around, owls turn their heads, up to about 270 degrees.
6. Pigeons, flamingos and penguins make “milk”
Pigeons and doves feed their chicks crop milk, a nutritious secretion from the crop. Flamingos and male Emperor Penguins make something similar.
7. Crows remember faces
Studies with masks found that crows learned to recognise people who had threatened them, scolded them later, and even seemed to teach other crows.
8. Some birds run a compost heap
The Malleefowl of Australia builds a mound of sand and rotting plants and uses it to incubate its eggs, checking the temperature with its bill.
9. A cuckoo chick evicts its nest mates
A young Common Cuckoo pushes the eggs and chicks of its foster parents out of the nest, so that it gets all the food.
10. Tits learned to open milk bottles
In 20th-century Britain, tits pecked through foil bottle tops to drink the cream, and the habit spread across the country.
11. Woodpeckers have a tongue that wraps around the skull
In many woodpeckers the root of the tongue curls around the back of the skull, which gives the tongue extra reach for catching insects.
12. Birds are living dinosaurs
Modern birds descend from small feathered dinosaurs. When you watch a Robin on a fence, you are watching a dinosaur.