History Main / ArtisticLicenseOrnithology

* ''{{Arrietty}}'' averts this by demonstrating corvid intelligence. A crow spots Arrietty, caws, and looks away, so Arietty turns away as well, to talk to Sho. Several ''minutes'' later, the "harmless" crow suddenly ''attacks from her blind side''. Only the cawing of another crow gives the attack away at the last second.

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' had a dodo (which looked nothing like a real dodo) that ''mimics speech like a parrot''. This is lampshaded by the main characters.

* RealLife roadrunners are omnivorous, gray, about one foot long, and look like little velociraptors when walking. But [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes the object of Wile E. Coyote's obsession]] more closely resembles an ostrich (if anything).

* ''Disney/TheThreeCaballeros'' - While the birds are either {{Funny Animal}}s or slightly cartoony, the Disney animators did [[ShownTheirWork show their work]], showcasing many obscure species. The one major misstep is the Aracuan Bird. Aracuans ''are'' real, but look and act nothing like their Disney equivalent, making the Clown of the Jungle a "take our word for it" case on par with Chuck Jone's Roadrunner.

* RealLife roadrunners are omnivorous, gray, about one foot long, and look like little velociraptors when walking. But [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes the object of Wile E. Coyote's obsession]] more closely resembles an ostrich.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Most people think hollow bones like those of birds are fragile. In reality, thanks to a complex honeycomb structure, bird bones are no more fragile than those of mammals. In the case of the now extinct dinosaurs and pterosaurs, both having pneumatic skeletons, fragility would mean death, and they obviously had quite strong yet light bones.
* Apparently, It is commonly believed in India that Peacocks are asexual and the female conceives by drinking the males tear. [[CaptainObvious This belief is not only incorrect,]] but ironic, because the birds are actually quite promiscuous. The entire reason the male bird fans his feathers is because he's trying to attract mates.
* It is a very, very common belief that mother birds will reject fallen babies that have been returned to the nest by humans, due to the human scent. A few problems with this:
** Very few birds have a sense of smell even worth mentioning (kiwis, albatrosses, and some vultures have a good sense of smell).
** Most mother animals ''don't care'' if the baby has had contact with humans, unless that contact has been prolonged. MamaBear wouldn't be much of a trope if mother animals abandoned any and all young touched by strangers.
** If humans or other animals are hanging around watching the nest, the parents will be reluctant to return until the "threat" has left.
** Disturbed ''eggs'' will likely cause parent birds to leave a site for good. The reason being that eggs don't move on their own, and if they've been moved around it's a sign that a predator has been nosing around.
** In some cases, the parents (or the other chicks) might have ''pushed'' it out of the nest. It could be sick or food could be too scarce for all the chicks. If a chick looks healthy (breathing normally and with no discharge from the eyes or nose) you can attempt to put it back, but there's no guarantee it will stay there. If it's been pushed out again when you get back, either leave it be or take it to a wildlife shelter.
** If a young bird seems to be fully-feathered, leave it be. It's nearly full-grown, and it's very normal for a young adult bird to spend a few days on the ground until it figures out how to fly.
* This got Music/AliceCooper into trouble once. Someone threw a live chicken onto the stage at a concert. Cooper, as he admitted later, had never actually seen a living chicken, and assumed it could fly. So he lofted it back at the crowd, only to see it fall into the audience, which promptly tore it apart, much to his shock.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Most people think hollow bones like those of birds are fragile. In reality, thanks to a complex honeycomb structure, bird bones are no more fragile than those of mammals. In the case of the now extinct dinosaurs and pterosaurs, both having pneumatic skeletons, fragility would mean death, and they obviously had quite strong yet light bones.
* Apparently, It is commonly believed in India that Peacocks are asexual and the female conceives by drinking the males tear. [[CaptainObvious This belief is not only incorrect,]] but ironic, because the birds are actually quite promiscuous. The entire reason the male bird fans his feathers is because he's trying to attract mates.
* It is a very, very common belief that mother birds will reject fallen babies that have been returned to the nest by humans, due to the human scent. A few problems with this:
** Very few birds have a sense of smell even worth mentioning (kiwis, albatrosses, and some vultures have a good sense of smell).
** Most mother animals ''don't care'' if the baby has had contact with humans, unless that contact has been prolonged. MamaBear wouldn't be much of a trope if mother animals abandoned any and all young touched by strangers.
** If humans or other animals are hanging around watching the nest, the parents will be reluctant to return until the "threat" has left.
** Disturbed ''eggs'' will likely cause parent birds to leave a site for good. The reason being that eggs don't move on their own, and if they've been moved around it's a sign that a predator has been nosing around.
** In some cases, the parents (or the other chicks) might have ''pushed'' it out of the nest. It could be sick or food could be too scarce for all the chicks. If a chick looks healthy (breathing normally and with no discharge from the eyes or nose) you can attempt to put it back, but there's no guarantee it will stay there. If it's been pushed out again when you get back, either leave it be or take it to a wildlife shelter.
** If a young bird seems to be fully-feathered, leave it be. It's nearly full-grown, and it's very normal for a young adult bird to spend a few days on the ground until it figures out how to fly.
* This got Music/AliceCooper into trouble once. Someone threw a live chicken onto the stage at a concert. Cooper, as he admitted later, had never actually seen a living chicken, and assumed it could fly. So he lofted it back at the crowd, only to see it fall into the audience, which promptly tore it apart, much to his shock.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:In General]]
* Whoever coined the term "eat like a bird" knew very little about ornithology, and depicting them as eating sparingly (or being fussy) is ''very'' inaccurate. Birds are actually [[BigEater Big Eaters]], some of them eating twice their weight a day because they use up so much energy flying and preserving themselves. These are prey animals (even ones who are themselves predators) so not only do birds have to keep moving to find food, they also have to keep moving to keep themselves safe from predators. To be fast, agile and quick, you need to have energy and that energy comes from food. Birds will constantly eat to maintain that energy so that they have fuel for energy to survive.
* The belief that ostriches stick their heads in the ground to hide from predators. First off, ostriches don't need to hide and are actually more than capable of fighting off their enemies (they can disembowel a lion with one kick from their hindlegs) let alone being able to simply outrun them. Second, if they did this they would suffocate.
** It's been suggested that this old wives' tale started by people seeing ostriches investigating the burrows of small animals for food (i.e., that the birds were hunting the current occupants).
* Anytime owls are depicted rotating their heads an entire 360 degrees. At most, an average owl can only turn its head about 270 degrees. As for the particulars, owls turn their heads as far as possible one way then turn them all the way in the other direction, they don't simply make a full circle from facing forward like in virtually every depiction.
* Birds being regarded as different animals than dinosaurs. Strictly speaking this is excusable—humans are not generally discussed as being great apes, even though they are—and in common usage "bird" means "solely the post-Cretaceous dinosaurs with adaptations for flight". But if a work discusses birds' or dinosaurs' ''evolution'', it really should come to grips with the fact "birds" are just the most derived theropods.
** Similarly, some ornithologists believe that birds have nothing to do with dinosaurs. [[http://dinosaurpalaeo.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/banditry-creationism-and-global-warming-denial/ Their arguments]] [[http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/07/17/birds-cannot-be-dinosaurs/ are best ignored]].
* Turkeys will always be depicted as [[AcrophobicBird hesitant to fly]] in media like domesticated turkeys, when wild turkeys are quite agile fliers in spite of their weight.
* The [[TheOwlKnowingOne common myth about owls being wise]] is just that, a myth, probably brought about because they appear to be thinking very hard when looking for prey. As it says on that Trope page, they are no smarter than any other bird, and many are smarter.
* The belief that a bird eating another bird or their eggs is cannibalism, and sometimes birds will be shown freaking out at the concept. A bird eating another bird is [[ArtisticLicenseBiology the same as mammals eating other mammals]], not to mention [[CriticalResearchFailure some like eagles and owls prey on other birds]].
* Portraying buzzards and vultures as one and the same. This may be because buzzard is a term for vultures in the New World.
[[/folder]]

* Coco the parrot in the 80s version of ''KimbaTheWhiteLion'' averts this. He has two toes in the front and two pointing back like a real parrot does.

* At the end of ''WesternAnimation/ABugsLife'' (also by Pixar), a passerine bird (apparently a finch) that constantly attacked the main characters actually hatches out several down-covered chicks with completely-opened eyes, that proceed to [[spoiler: eat Hopper alive]]. In real life, [[http://jaybirdseye.smugmug.com/Nature/Other-Birds/House-Finch-chicks-6-days-old/303311929_ebwW6-L.jpg baby passerine birds are born mostly naked]] (aside from a few hairy feathers in a few species) and blind, and would look nothing [[http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100928063221/pixar/images/4/43/Bl_059Chicks.jpg like they do in the film]], which look more like baby chickens.
** Also, finches are specialized seed-eaters, so are unlikely to persistently attack insects in the first place.
* The movie ''WesternAnimation/LegendOfTheGuardiansTheOwlsOfGaHoole'' is one of the least obnoxious examples, [[GeniusBonus and goes well out of]] [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything its way to avoid this trope.]] For the most part the birds looked, acted, and moved like owls, aside from their eyes. The fixed raptor glare wouldn't have cut it in a visual medium, but otherwise they are fairly realistic. The film even avoids the dreaded AcrophobicBird trope ("We're on the ground! The worst place for an Owl!")

* Movies set in jungles often display this trope. The Congo will be populated by South American parrots, African birds show up in the Amazon, and Australian birds show up everywhere...
** Kookaburras really get around, don't they? Damn things live in every jungle. They even have the gall to sound exactly like monkeys! [[StockSoundEffects Oh, wait...]]

* Small potatoes compared to some of the other weirdness in the movie, but on Film/HowardTheDuck's homeworld, duck hens have [[NonMammalMammaries breasts]]. Later on, a [[ParodyOfEvolution parody of the (in)famous "rise of man"]] [[EvolutionaryLevels evolution sequence]] is shown and Howard's earliest ancestor is... [[YouFailBiologyForever an egg]]. Well, at least we now know which came first.

* ''TheBartimaeusTrilogy'' is normally correct on this and parodies this trope when Bartimaeus transforms into a raven for the first time and it was in the dark. He winds up almost normal but with a bright blue beak.
* Italian 18th century poet [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugo_Foscolo-link Ugo Foscolo]] invented from nowhere a false association between the colourful bird [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoopoe Hoopoe]] and graveyards in his famous work "Dei Sepolcri" (roughly translated as "About the Tombs") because he felt that it was poetically fit.
** True only if you consider the eastern Baltic to be "nowhere" (which to some it may be). In Estonia , and to a lesser degree in neighboring areas, the hoopoe has traditionally been considered to be a harbinger of death. Across the sea in Scandinavia it is a harbinger of war.
** He's probably going off the tradition that the hoopoe is the wisest of birds and finds out things that (e.g. in the Literature/{{Quran}}) even Solomon couldn't discover. It's also the king of the birds in Aristophanes' ''Theatre/TheBirds'' and in the Persian poem "Conference of the Birds".

* In addition to what appears on the page quote, the [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Harry_Potter_and_the_Chamber_of_Secrets.jpg cover of]] ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets'' clearly depicts a Barn Owl (''Tyto alba'') in the owl cage during the Ford Anglia drive. It is well known the owl, Hedwig's species is the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Owl Snowy Owl]] (''Bubo scandiacus'' formerly ''Nyctea scandiaca'').
** Draco Malfoy's eagle owl is far bigger than one would expect, as [[http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs19/f/2007/239/9/0/Harry_Potter_and_the_PSA_by_lyosha.jpg demonstrated here]].
** Although [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_owl Eagle owl's]] have a range or different sizes, the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Eagle-owl_in_Great_Britain Eurasian Eagle-owl]] is currently the largest owl living in Britain. (It's the largest species of owl in the world, actually.)
* In ''BabylonRising'' by Tim LaHaye and Greg Dinallo, villain [[MeaningfulName Talon]] trains ''hawks'' to serve as [[InstantMessengerPigeon instant messenger pigeons]]. Furthermore, his trained hawks can unroll scrolls, kill a man by dive-bombing his back, and fly around carrying [[BuffySpeak big snake statue bits.]]

* ''Hysteria'', the woeful TV movie about the rock band DefLeppard, features shots of American bird species in its very first scene, despite being set in Sheffield, Yorkshire.
* ''WheelOfFortune'' has trouble with bird-related puzzles, most often by putting two completely unrelated birds in the same puzzle. Twice they've had SPARROWS & PARAKEETS as a puzzle, and another time, they had CARDINALS & CANARIES — which is doubly wrong, as cardinals are a family of birds, and canaries a distinct species.
* In-universe EpicFail example: On "The Bloodhound Gang", a series of kids' detective shorts, a slimy lawyer re-wrote his bird-loving client's will to leave his fortune to a charitable organization the lawyer would run. Said organization's declared purpose was to finance the care and protection of the American passenger pigeon, a species that's been extinct since 1914.

* Some fun with falconry - Henry VIII in ''TheTudors'' is shown handling a Harris's Hawk, a North American species that would be utterly alien to 16th century falconers and in fact, only popularized in Europe from the late 20th century onwards.
* On ''Series/{{Bones}}'', a park ranger in an East Coast nature reserve once urged Brennen and Booth to finish up their investigation quickly, as their presence might disturb the migration of boobies through the area. This line, aside from existing solely so Booth could make a cheap boob joke, must've caused facepalms among birdwatchers everywhere, as boobies are found only in the Pacific.
** Not ''quite'' true; Masked Boobies are a breeding species in Florida, while Brown and Red-footed Boobies are also found there. Away from the Dry Tortugas, though, they are ''extremely'' rare, and they certainly don't migrate anywhere along the East Coast. There may be some FridgeLogic here though, as the Northern Gannet ''does'' migrate up and down the east coast, and is from the same family of birds as the boobies (and very similar in appearance to them to the point where immature gannets can be confused for adult Brown Boobies).
* One episode of ''TheBigBangTheory'' has Sheldon being terrorized by what the cast calls a "blue jay." It's really a black-throated magpie-jay, which on top of that is not native to Pasadena.
** Justified since Sheldon has a crippling fear of birds, and wouldn't be expected to know enough about them. Also, the bird was established as an escaped pet.

* And there's always that wonderful moment, known to all birdwatchers, when you're watching a movie and it shows a shot of a bald eagle... while a [[http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-tailed_Hawk/sounds Red-Tailed Hawk]] screams in the background. Presumably they thought [[http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bald_Eagle/sounds sparrow-like chirping]] wasn't manly enough for the mascot of {{Eagleland}}.
** A sin committed OnceAnEpisode on ''Series/TheColbertReport'', where the eagle in the opening credits (whose name is Liberty, if you were wondering) makes precisely this noise. This makes sense in the context of the show, as [[GutFeeling bald eagles]] ''[[GutFeeling should]]'' [[GutFeeling sound like that]].
*** Red-Tailed Hawks: The Marni Nixon of the bird world.
* The number of jungles across the world in which the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughing_Kookaburra Kookaburra]] -- an Australian species of kingfisher -- can be found is ''astounding''. Many outdoor scenes use the call of a [[http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Belted_Kingfisher/sounds Belted Kingfisher]] -- a North American species almost exclusively found near water.
* The [[http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Limpkin/sounds Limpkin]], a mostly unremarkable bird found in Central and South America, plus Florida, has a very distinctive and indeed downright bizarre cry that's impossible to mistake for anything else. According to the movies, vocal limpkins are apparently a staple of African jungles (especially the Tarzan movies). Oh, and the hippogriff in the movie version of ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' is voice-acted for by one of these little brown birds.
* The distinctive call of the [[http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Loon/id Common Loon]], a bird found almost exclusively on large northern lakes, can be heard in deserts, tropical jungles, swamps in the DeepSouth, caves, and anywhere else filmmakers want an eerie wildlife sound.
* Period British TV series often use generic birdsong sound effects that include the [[http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eurasian_Collared-Dove/id Collared Dove]], a species that didn't colonise Britain until the 1950s.

* If you believe sound effects technicians, every beach on the planet is home to herring gulls, no matter the location or season.

** Pigeons and flamingos do feed their chicks with something similar to, but very different from, milk, called crop milk. The milk is made from a secretion from the birds' crop. Ducks and parrots, on the other hand...
** Even if they ''were'' pigeons or flamingos, they'd have no business drinking milk ''from a baby bottle''.
** Speaking of [=FurReal=] Friends... Are ponies usually covered in such thick and luscious fur?
** The UK Shetland pony does have thick shaggy coat.

* [[Franchise/FinalFantasy Chocobos]] are functionally ostrich-like horse analogues. In some games like ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'', they have a vaguely plausible, though friendly [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacid appearance]], but traditionally are cute'd up and somewhat resemble chicken-like moas. Some can also fly, despite being as big as a ''donkey''. Baby chocobos are pure "baby chick" though.
** Justified in the cartoonier games, especially the Chocobo's Dungeon spinoff, since the humans are equally strangely proportioned.
** The most egregious case is probably ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'', where adult chocobos are ridiculously large and the chicks are not only the same size as baby chickens, but ''can fly despite the adults not being able to.'' Possibly justified in that the chocobo chick was the closest thing to a comic relief in that game.

* In a weird version, the Moas of ''GuildWars'' look nothing like the real moa, but are fairly accurate phorusrhacids...
** So would that be a Somewhere An Onithologist And A Paleontologist Are Crying On Each Others' Shoulders trope?

%%* ''AngryBirds''. That is all.

** ''TailsAdventure'' gives us the Battle Bird Armada, a paramilitary organization whose ranks include Doctor Fukurokov, an owl with a ''beard''. Interestingly enough, the [[ComicBook/ArchieComicsSonicTheHedgehog the comics]] connected both them and the Rogues to one another, along with the more Daffy Duck-like [[VideoGame/SonicTheFighters Bean the Dynamite]] and the comic-original villain Predator Hawk.

* In ''TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob,'' it is implied that Molly the Monster's pink coloring comes from her having some genetic material from a flamingo. In real life, flamingos' pink color comes from protiens in the plankton they eat, and their feathers turn drab without it.

* One customer on Website/NotAlwaysRight insisted that only mammals have meat, [[http://notalwaysright.com/somebody-took-an-evolutionary-detour/16854 ergo chicken is a mammal]].

* Cartoon crows will usually have a yellow beak. In RealLife, most of them are all black; if it has a yellow beak, it's probably a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chough yellow-billed chough]] instead. Unless it appears in British media where the creators have used a typical Blackbird instead.
** This is actually a plot point in AlfredJKwak where the recurring villain Dolf is only half crow and does not in fact have a black beak, but he paints it black in order to pass for a full blood crow.

** Light was made of this in ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'' when the crew's pet emu was outfitted with speakers to allow it to vocalize, and wakes up the genetically-enhanced wolf AI with a ''meep meep!'' ..."Can our roadrunner outrun our coyote?"
** ''War and Pieces'' features [[MisplacedWildlife a roadrunner on the wrong side of the Pacific]].
* Daffy Duck has been heard to quack and have a white neck ring like a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallard mallard]], but has all black plumage more like a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Scoter black scoter]].
** MallardFillmore arbitrarily changes color from green to black between panels - maybe he suffers from the same species identity crisis?
*** In his very first cartoon (back when he actually looked like a duck) Daffy had a ''light blue'' ring around his neck. Make of that what you will.

* One episode of ''JohnnyTest'' has penguins referred to as "flightless furballs".
* Iago from ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}'' (a macaw) has two toes in front of the foot and...''one'' toe in back? Oops.
** Also, despite for all appearances being based on a scarlet macaw, he's a fifth the size and somehow in Arabia centuries before the continent they're native to was discovered.
* Another All Birds Are Chickens toe error: On ''TheMysteriesOfAlfredHedgehog'', a woodpecker was depicted with three toes in front and one in back, rather than the proper two-and-two. Rather disappointing for a show intended to advance science/nature education.
* WoodyWoodpecker. A garishly-colored feather duster with goggly green eyes and a beak that occasionally exhibits teeth, he's no doubt been the cause of many an ornothologist's tears. Then again, the species he is in theory, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, entered urban legend status around when they started making these cartoons.
* Margaret from ''RegularShow''. The official site calls her a robin. She's bright red like a ''male'' cardinal, but really looks more like a PaletteSwap of Mordecai (a bluejay). And she has [[NonMammalMammaries lady pecs]].
* One episode of ''FamilyGuy'' features a gag where two stoned seagulls are talking about how KFC is delicious, and one of them freaks out when the other one points out that he's eating bird. Never mind that there's plenty of other animal species which will eat their own kind: the closest taxonomic relation the two share is class--that is, a gull eating chicken is no more cannibalism than a person eating a cow. That, and some species of gulls will prey on other birds.
** Film/HowardTheDuck makes a similar error, when the eponymous character freaks out over being offered eggs at a restaurant, shouting about how he's not a cannibal. This is despite the fact that as an '''alien''', there's no way he could be even remotely related to any terrestrial bird species.
** On the note of that drunk scene, alcohol is toxic to birds.

** Also, cartoon pelicans in general.
** They can hold in their beak food enough for a week.
* An episode of ''TimonAndPumbaa'' claims that toucans have serrated bills for crushing, and the antagonistic toucan character was even shown crushing a snail shell. While the bill of a toucan is certainly serrated, it has weak muscles and is incapable of crushing even soft fruit.

* One episode of ''MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' had a woodpecker carry off a mouse with the intention of eating it.

* One episode of ''TheFlintstones'' had a dodo (which looked nothing like a real dodo) that ''mimics speech like a parrot''. This is lampshaded by the main characters.
* The ''JonnyQuest'' episode "Treasure of the Temple" had a toucan that can mimic human speech like a parrot.
* Ralph from ''MarthaSpeaks'' was revealed to be female duck in "his" second appearance upon laying eggs, in spite of [[AnimalGenderBender having the colorings of a male mallard]].

* One episode of ''JohnnyBravo'' had an emu being fed avocados, which are poisonous to birds.
* The ducks in ''{{Breadwinners}}'' eat nothing but bread, which would kill a real duck.

* Portraying buzzards and vultures as one and the same.

** Another episode had a female and hatchling ostrich with black feathers of an adult male ostrich. Both ostriches also had tree-toed feet.

** Another episode had a female ostrich with black feathers and three-toed feet.

* Mention must be made of a Disney adaptation of ''Series/SwissFamilyRobinson'' (a [[RecycledTheSeries series spun off from their film adaptation]]) where the family meets a falconer and his... bird. A bird that is played by at least ''three different species'' over the course of the episode. By the time she is shown flying (via stock footage of a falcon), landing on the ground (suddenly, she's a Red-Tailed Hawk), and then landing on the man's wrist (now she's a Golden Eagle), you wonder how the producers thought we wouldn't notice.

* The ducks in {{Breadwinners}} eat nothing but bread, which would kill a real duck.

** The macaws' and toucans' feet are generic cartoon bird feet with two toes pointing forward and one pointing back, when they should have two pointing forward and ''two'' pointing back, like real parrot-types do. Blue and Jewel also sport Cockatoo-like crests.

* The ostriches in the "Dance of the Hours" sequence of ''Disney/{{Fantasia}}'' are ''supposed'' to be female... but the plumage is that of a ''male'' ostrich. Females are brown.

* ''AngryBirds''. That is all.

The grandchild of ArtisticLicensePaleontology. [[MostWritersAreHuman Most animators are mammals]], and they tend not to be careful with the research when it comes to non-mammals. So, for whatever reason, cartoon birds tend to be quite unlike anything seen in RealLife.

Cartoon birds in starring roles tend to be one of only five or six semi-recognizable species. Ducks, chickens, owls, and [[EverythingsBetterWithPenguins penguins]] are particularly popular and will all look pretty generic. In some cases, you will have to [[CartoonCreature take the writer's word for it what species they are meant to be]]. Parrots are also popular and they'll sport generic chicken-like bird feet and will either be pure green with huge yellow beaks, or have cockatoo crests and a bizarre mix of rainbow colors. Birds of prey other than owls tend to look like an odd combination of any carnivorous bird; in particular cartoonists seem to get hawks and vultures confused with each other (and sometimes {{Corvid|sTropes}} are tossed into the mix too). This may be because of the [[CallASmeerpARabbit "buzzard" confusion]] (in Europe a buzzard is a type of hawk like an American Red-Tail, while in parts of America, a buzzard is a small condor also known as a Turkey Vulture.) Many works, both live-action and animated, will also use the call of a Red-Tailed hawk instead of the actual call of whatever eagle or hawk they actually use. This is likely because many raptors, such as the otherwise majestic and supremely American bald eagles [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlq2kcYQcLc]], have calls that are rather unimpressive in comparison to the powerful scream of a Red-Tailed Hawk.

Almost all generic small cartoon birds will behave like robins, hopping around on the lawn and eating worms. And they will appear as a {{Palette Swap}}ped sparrow, often bright yellow or blue, with a yellow beak and legs.