Aside from cats and dogs, birds can also feature in movies. The most well-known bird movies come from the Rio and The Angry Birds franchises. However, there have also been lots of other popular on-screen birds over the years. Seeing the shapes and sizes of those birds, it’s not impossible to wonder where such birds come from and their creators’ inspirations when they created such bird characters. Below, we list down 10 famous birds along with their species!
1. Woodstock (European Woodstock)
Woodstock is the yellow bird who is Snoopy’s best friend. His appearance is often a mystery as viewers can sometimes not easily decipher what kind of bird Woodstock is. Perhaps his kind is obscure, something that can’t be easily guessed. Even Snoopy, at one point, gave up trying to guess what Woodstock is.
While Woodstock is named after a certain musical festival, he strongly resembles an actual Woodstock species.
2. Blu (Spix’s Macaw)
The first Rio movie highlighted the issue of species extinction by making its main characters be in the form of a highly-endangered bird species. The movie followed the story of the birds attempting to mate to save their species. Blu (and Jewel) are Spix’s macaws (Cyanopsitta spixii), a species considered extinct in the wild by the IUCN at the time of writing. Their kind was rare and was only found in Brazil.
3. Zeta (Philippine Eagle)
This list also contains a few birds from The Angry Birds franchise, whether the movies or the games. Zeta being a Philippine Eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi) looks a bit too far off from her real-life counterpart. Even if we ignore Zeta’s color, her feather arrangement is too unorderly compared to an actual Philippine eagle. If ever, Ethan (Mighty Eagle) looks more like an eagle than Zeta does. Oh, Mighty Eagle is a Northern Bald Eagle.
4. Pedro (Red-crested Cardinal)
Pedro, the expressive white-and-red bird Nico’s friend in the Rio movie franchise, is a songbird. To be more specific, he is said to be a red-crested cardinal. Such birds are usually colored red in their heads, white in their body, and gray in their wings, though these birds are not usually fat in appearance.
5. Mordecai (Blue Jay)
Blue Jays (Cyanocitta cristata) are native to North America, particularly in the United States and Canada. They have a song-bird appearance, however, one of their distinguishing characteristics is that their blue color covers their entire backs, making them just single-colored.
Mordecai is quite different from the blue jays because he cannot fly, and his beak houses teeth.
6. Bomb (Greater Antillean Bullfinch)
Now we have our second Angry Birds entry. Bomb is a character in the movie franchise known to be able to explode if under extreme pressure. While Greater Antillean Bullfinches (Loxigilla violacea) have rounded bodies with short beaks. Bomb is too big in comparison to a life-sized one.
7. Red (Northern Cardinal)
Red is the main character in The Angry Birds movie franchise and is the first playable bird in The Angry Birds game series. Like Rio’s Pedro, Red is a cardinal. And perhaps, some viewers might have already seen a few resemblances because of their red color. Terence is a Northern Cardinal too.
8. Tweety (Yellow Canary)
Tweety is a small yellow bird with a large head and large orange feet. He (yes, he is a boy) has the same relationship with Sylvester as Jerry has with Tom. They’re like frenemies of some sort. Sources indicate that he is a canary, though he can be mistaken for a duckling.
9. Chuck (Atlantic Canary)
In the Angry Birds games, Chuck is known as a triangular-shaped bird. After launching the bird from the slingshot and clicking anywhere on the screen, Chuck activates his ability which makes him speed up toward the pigs’ defenses. He is very effective against wood and weak against stone. Those facts are also reflected in The Angry Birds Movie when the birds infiltrated King Leonard’s castle.
10. The Blues (Eastern Bluebirds)
Jim, Jake, and Jay, also collectively known as “The Blues,” are a trio of birds in The Angry Birds franchise. In the games, only one trio would be thrown from the slingshot, and the other two would appear upon clicking. This duplication is also shown in the ending scene of The Angry Birds Movie.
The trio is based on Eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis), a small bird species in Eastern North America.
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