Q1.
parrot, macaw, sparrow, crow, ostrich, seagull, pigeon, flamingo, weaver bird, tailor bird
Choose any two of the above and find out a few interesting facts about them.
Answer
The ten birds pictured on page 52 are: parrot, macaw, sparrow, crow, ostrich, seagull, pigeon, flamingo, weaver bird and tailor bird. Pick any two of them.
How to find your facts:
- Look in your school library for a book on birds, or ask your teacher for one.
- Ask an elder at home — grandparents often know a great deal about local birds.
- Best of all, watch the bird yourself if it lives near you. Write down what it eats, where it sits and what sound it makes.
- Write five or six facts for each bird. Then draw it, or stick a picture.
What a good answer needs: where the bird lives · what it eats · how big it is · what its nest is like · one thing that makes it special.
Sample answer — two birds, written up:
1. The tailor bird
- It is a tiny bird, smaller than a sparrow, with a greenish back and a rusty-red cap on its head.
- It gets its name from the way it builds its nest. It picks two big living leaves, makes tiny holes along their edges with its beak, and stitches them together with plant fibre or spider silk — exactly like a tailor sewing a seam.
- The stitched leaves make a green pouch. Inside it the bird puts soft grass and lays its eggs. The nest is very hard to spot, because it is made of leaves that are still growing on the plant.
- It eats small insects, and it helps our gardens by clearing pests.
- Its call is a loud, sharp towit-towit, repeated again and again. It is much louder than you would expect from so small a bird.
- It is common in Indian gardens and hedges, so you may well have one near your house.
2. The ostrich
- It is the largest bird in the world. A grown ostrich can be about 2.5 metres tall — taller than the door of your classroom.
- It cannot fly at all. Its wings are far too small for its heavy body.
- Instead, it runs. An ostrich can run at about 70 kilometres an hour, faster than any other bird on land, and its long legs cover a huge distance in one stride.
- It lays the biggest egg of any bird alive. One ostrich egg weighs about as much as twenty-four hen’s eggs.
- It has only two toes on each foot. Most birds have four. Fewer toes help it run faster.
- It lives wild in Africa, in dry grasslands, and eats seeds, grass, leaves and small insects.
| Bird | One fact to start you off |
|---|---|
| parrot | It can copy human speech, and it holds its food up in one claw to eat — like a hand. |
| macaw | The biggest and most brightly coloured parrot. It lives in the rainforests of South America and can live for over 50 years. |
| sparrow | It lives with people, in the holes and corners of our houses. Its numbers have fallen in cities, so 20 March is kept as World Sparrow Day. |
| crow | One of the cleverest birds. Crows can use small twigs as tools and can remember a human face for years. |
| ostrich | The largest bird on earth. It cannot fly, but it runs at about 70 km an hour. |
| seagull | A sea bird. It can drink salty sea water, because special glands above its eyes throw out the extra salt. |
| pigeon | It can find its way home from hundreds of kilometres away. Pigeons were used to carry letters in wartime. |
| flamingo | It stands on one leg for hours and feeds with its head upside down. It is pink because of the tiny food it eats. |
| weaver bird | The male weaves a hanging nest out of long grass strips, knot by knot. The female inspects it, and if it is not good enough he pulls it apart and starts again. |
| tailor bird | It stitches two leaves together with plant fibre to make its nest. |
Notice something: Three of these birds — the weaver bird, the tailor bird and the flamingo — are named for what they do, not for how they look. The weaver weaves, the tailor stitches, and the flamingo takes its name from an old word for flame, because of its colour. A bird’s name often hides a fact inside it.