Bird food or bird seed is food intended for consumption by wild, commercial, or pet birds. It is typically composed of seeds, nuts, dry fruits, flour, and may be enriched with vitamins and proteins.
A mixture of seeds in a bird feeder
Bushtits eating suet from a bird feeder
The beak, bill, or rostrum is an external anatomical structure found mostly in birds, but also in turtles, non-avian dinosaurs and a few mammals. A beak is used for pecking, grasping, and holding, preening, courtship, and feeding young. The terms beak and rostrum are also used to refer to a similar mouth part in some ornithischians, pterosaurs, cetaceans, dicynodonts, anuran tadpoles, monotremes, sirens, pufferfish, billfishes and cephalopods.
The bony core of the beak is a lightweight framework, like that seen on this barn owl's skull.
A gull's upper mandible can flex upwards because it is supported by small bones which can move slightly backwards and forwards.
The sawtooth serrations on a common merganser's bill help it to hold tight to its fish prey.
A bird's culmen is measured in a straight line from the tip of the beak to a set point — here, where the feathering starts on the bird's forehead.