What's for Dinner?

SUMMARY:	Explore bird's feeding habits in this worksheet activity. This lesson is part of a series. Select this text to learn more about the series and how to extend its usefulness.
OBJECTIVES:	Students will learn more about bird adaptations by studying different bird beaks and their specialized uses in a worksheet activity.
SUBJECTS:	Science
GRADES:	2 - 5
LENGTH:	Quickie

Background: The shape of a bird's beak can give us many clues as to what kind of food primarily makes up its diet. Ducks use their flat bills like strainers sifting plankton out of the water. Eagles have strong hooked beaks that they tear their prey or bits of plants with. Sandpipers use their long beaks to probe in the sand while woodpeckers use their strong chisel-like beaks to peck insects out of wood. Hummingbirds use their needle-like beaks as straws to get nectar from flowers. Each beak is specialized for the food that the bird eats.

Materials: Strainer (duck), knife (eagle), nutcracker (grosbeak), sharp tweezers (woodpecker), straw (hummingbird), scoop (pelican), and What's For Dinner? worksheet.

How to:

Talk about adaptations and how animals have developed special tools to deal with their environments.

1. Have the students think of all the different shapes of birds beaks.
2. Place all the various utensils out on a table for the students to look at.
3. Pass out the worksheets. Instruct the students to match the food to the best suited bird beak.
4. Now hold up each utensil and have the students guess which bird's beak acts most like this utensil. Compare the results with the worksheet.