Beaks and Bills

The serrations on the upper bill of this aracari were once thought to be for catching fish. Now scientists know that toucans (including aracaris and toucanets) mostly eat fruit and use the serrations to cut through the outer skin of fruits like bananas.

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"Look at the beak on that toucan!” my wife exclaimed. “Bill not beak,” I self-righteously corrected. Somewhere along the way, I learned that only the hooked, flesh-tearing apparatus of a raptor was a beak, all other birds had bills. Sigh. Wrong again. Apparently, that was old thinking, something I hadn’t bothered to cross-check until I sat down to write this column.

According to Ornithology.com and Cornell University’s, All About Birds website, the words, bill and beak, are synonymous. Ornithologists do tend to use the word “bill” more often than “beak”. Some people define a bill as fleshy and beak as hard and usually pointy (sparrows would qualify as having a beak, not a bill). Others say, “a bill is the beak of a bird when it is slender, flattened, weak (doesn't hurt when it bites you), or belongs to a web-footed bird or a bird of the pigeon family. In other words, a bill is a type of beak, but not all beaks are also bills.” Confused?

The Oxford English Living Dictionary defines a beak as, “A bird's horny projecting jaws; a bill.” And it defines a bill as, “The beak of a bird.” If a dictionary uses one word to define the other, then in my book they are synonymous and from now on I will treat them as such and will only use the word, bill, for this discussion.

The bill of a bird is an extension of the jawbone or mandible on the bottom and the upper jaw or maxilla on top. This bony core on top and bottom is covered with a keratin sheath similar to fingernails. For most birds, this bill is their only tool so it stands to reason that the sheath, called a rhamphotheca, takes a beating over time. So just like fingernails it continually grows and replaces itself.

The main purpose of a bill is for food gathering and processing. And that has created a wild variety of types of bills. On our recent adventure in Ecuador, we saw an amazing variety of bills. The sword-billed hummingbird of the Andes Mountains was the first. This large hummingbird is the only bird known to have a bill that is longer than the rest of its body, about six inches long. It co-evolved with passion flowers that have long tubular corollas.

The black flowerpiercer is a warbler-sized bird. This bird is a cheater, stealing nectar without providing the benefit of pollination. It does this by using a fine hooked point at the tip of its warbler-like bill to pierce the base of a flower from the outside and drink the nectar.

Toucans, toucanets, and aracaris all have huge and massive bills, some nearly as long as their bodies. If you can’t think of what a toucan looks like, just think about the cartoon toucan, Toucan Sam, which has been the mascot of Froot Loops breakfast cereal since 1963. These massive bills are actually quite lightweight, with a structure somewhat like expanding foam. Besides allowing the birds to access large fruits such as bananas, the bills also act as thermoregulators, helping the birds maintain their body temperature.

But we don’t have to go to Ecuador to find crazy bird bills. Pelican bills likely lead with unique adaptations. They are very large, have flexible side bones and a large attached pouch. Grosbeaks have stout bills strong enough to crush a cherry pit and turkey vultures have large bills strong enough to tear through the hide of a dead cow or deer. Insect eating specialists such as flycatchers and nighthawks have flatter bills, seed eaters like sparrows tend to have conical pointed bills. Raptors, like the great gray owl in my yard today, have strong bills with a wicked hook on the end used for tearing prey into bite-sized pieces. Many shorebirds have long thin bills, sometimes curved, and cormorants have a hook at the end of their bill. And that is just the beginning. There are so many bill shapes and sizes it boggles the mind.

Bills are used for far more than just food gathering and processing though. A bird may use its bill for preening, as a defensive tool, for nest building, feeding young, and even for attracting a mate. And it is interesting to note that Allen’s Rule, which states that northern members of the same species will tend to have smaller appendages than southern species, holds reasonably well for bird bills as well.

Whether you call it a bill or a beak, that structure on the end of a bird’s face is amazing, allowing birds to occupy almost every habitat on this planet.

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Help Idaho Wildlife

When we traveled across the state in October 2017, most of the vehicles we saw using the wildlife management areas did not have wildlife plates. Buying wildlife plates is a great way for non-hunters and hunters alike to support wildlife-based recreation like birding.

C'mon folks, let's help Idaho's wildlife by proudly buying and displaying a wildlife license plate on each of our vehicles! 

See below for information on Idaho plates. Most states have wildlife plates so if you live outside Idaho, check with your state's wildlife department or vehicle licensing division for availability of state wildlife plates where you live. 

And tell them that you heard about it from Nature-track.com!

Wildlife License Plates

Great news! as of 2024, there are three NEW designs for license plates. They still are bluebird, cutthroat trout and elk, but they are beautiful.

Idaho Wildlife license plates provide essential funding that benefits the great diversity of native plants and wildlife that are not hunted, fished or trapped—over 10,000 species or 98% of Idaho’s species diversity. Game species that share the same habitats (such as elk, deer, antelope, sage-grouse, salmon, trout) also benefit from these specialty plates.

No state tax dollars are provided for wildlife diversity, conservation education and recreation programs. Neither are any revenues from the sale of hunting or fishing licenses spent on nongame species. Instead, these species depend on direct donations, federal grants, fundraising initiatives—and the Idaho Wildlife license plates.

Both my vehicles have Bluebird Plates. I prefer the bluebird because the nongame program gets 70 percent of the money from bluebird plates, but only 60 percent of the money from elk and trout plates - 10 percent of the money from elk plates supports wildlife disease monitoring and testing programs (to benefit the livestock industry) and 10 percent from cutthroat plates supports non-motorized boat access.

Incidentally, in 2014, the Idaho Legislature denied the Department of Fish and Game the ability to add new plates or even to change the name of the elk and cutthroat plates (very specific) to wildlife and fish plates, a move that would have allowed for changing images occasionally and generating more revenue. It would seem that they believe that we Idahoans don't want a well funded wildlife program.

I think it is time we let the Legislature know that Idahoan support wildlife funding and that we would like to see these generic plates come to fruition.