Special delivery

Activity overview

Run the activity

1. You’re going to watch a short video. The aim isn't to find right answers, it's to explore ideas and find out what they know.

• Do they know what might happen based on the image?

2. After you've watched the video, lead a discussion with your class:

• What group do these animals belong to?
• Is this how you were fed when you were a baby?
• What was the same or different about each bird you saw?
• What part/parts of the bird is most important when feeding their young?

3. Ask the class to describe what they saw using only one word.

Background science

The video shows different birds feeding their chicks. Both male and female bird parents will bring back food, plants and meat for the chicks to eat. You'll see in the video that they take this food from their parent’s beaks. We know that mammals are the only animal group that produces milk for young, but some birds such as the pigeon, flamingo and male emperor penguin produce a milk-like secretion that gives the chicks lots of nutrients in order to grow strong. 

Take it further

Ask children to decide which is the Odd One Out in our Looking after baby activity to discover how animals look after their young. If they enjoyed watching one of our What’s Going On? videos, here’s another one about wriggly creatures that often end up in bird beaks!