On 3rd, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd & Bird!
- "3rd! 3rd & Bird! Where the birdies meet just above the street to sing tweedle-ee-deet!"
3rd & Bird is a British animated Preschool Show created by Josh Selig and animated by his company Little Airplane Productions at their London studio.
It revolves around a group of birds and their daily adventures. The central characters are:
- Samuel, a lovebird
- Muffin, his little sister
- Rudy, a cockatoo and Samuel's best friend
- Mr. Beakman, a toucan and a teacher
Each episode is written with the purpose of conveying pro-social morals to its young audience. Much like Selig's previous series Wonder Pets!, it is animated using "photo-puppetry." The series premiered on CBeebies in 2008, and later premiered in the United States in 2010 on Playhouse Disney, and continued to air when they rebranded to Disney Junior.
3rd & Bird provides examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming:
- Muffin frequently gets names wrong, calling Samuel (her own brother!) "Sammil", Rudy "Udy", and Mr. Beakman "Beaky". Ben the pig also calls Mr. Beakman "Mr. Beaky".
- Jordan calls Muffin "Uffin", which annoys her to no end, especially since the older boys think it's cute.
- Baby Talk: Muffin and Jordan the young birds speak like this. Both speak in third person, drop the word "the" sometimes, say "no" in place of "don't" or "doesn't", sometimes drop "s"es in verbs (like saying "he crawl" instead of "he crawls"), drop "is", and fail to pronounce names (Muffin calls her older brother Samuel "Sammel" and his friend Rudy "Oody", their friend Elliot "Ellit", and Quinn "Quinny". Jordan calls Muffin "'Uffin", which really annoys her, especially since other birds think it's cute.
- Big Finale Crowd Song: Elliot's debut episode ends with everyone singing an anti-prejudice song about how "different is good".
- Brainy Pig: Downplayed with Ben. He's not particularly intelligent, but he speaks in a refined, eloquent way.
- The Diss Track: In "Baby Jordan", Muffin sings a song to Jordan about how she dislikes him, or, as she puts it, she "no like" him, for stealing all her attention and not being able to say her name correctly.
- Goo Goo Get Up: In "Baby!," Muffin convinces a reluctant Mr. Beakman to pretend to be a baby for a game of house.
- Hated Item Makeover: In one episode, Muffin paints the whole tree with multicoloured paint. None of the older birds like this. In fact, when her brother Samuel discovers it, he dramatically yells, "It's RU-INED! RU-INED!".
- Homesickness Hymn: In the Camping Episode, Muffin sings a song about how she wants to go back home. Every verse ends on the phrase "Muffin want to go home!"
- "I Hate" Song: Esther once sings a song about her bird prejudice called "I Don't Like Birds".
- Prejudice Aesop:
- In "Muffin's Friend!," Muffin makes friends with a pig named Ben, but Samuel and Rudy tell her not to bring him to visit because pigs are dirty and lazy. When Ben does show up, however, he proves to be a Neat Freak and not lazy at all.
- In "Meet Elliot!," Samuel makes friends with a worm named Elliot, but Muffin doesn't like worms because they move differently. Samuel teaches her that differences are fine and they sing a song about how "Different is Good".
- Another episode featuring Elliot, "Aunt Esther!," involves the birds going to Elliot's family reunion where Esther, his aunt, is prejudiced against birds. They teach her to shed her prejudice, again with the "Different is Good" song.
- Species Subversives: Ben, the pig, is both a subversion and an inversion of the Messy Pig trope — Samuel and Rudy think he will be dirty when they hear he is a pig, but he is actually a Neat Freak.
- Stinky Flower: In "Muffin's Plant!," Muffin finds a strange flower that, while beautiful, smells bad. It makes fart noises as well.
- Shakey shake, the Muffin!Ah, ah, ooh!The, the, the Muffin!The, the, the Muffin!
