Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2022 i Click Science and Discovery Magazine for Preschoolers and Young Children

Have you seen goose down feathers from a jacket or comforter? Like you, birds wear these soft, fluffy feathers close to their skin to stay warm. They weigh less than hair or fur, so they’re better for flying. A smooth, streamlined body helps a bird slide through the air. Instead of a heavy jawbone and teeth, a bird has a lightweight beak. Birds have big, strong chest muscles. They need them to flap their wings hard and fast, so they can make the air around them move quickly enough to lift the bird. A bird’s outer feathers are strong but lightweight. Like shingles on a roof, they overlap and lie flat, so rain runs off and the bird stays dry. To stay lightweight for flying, most birds have short, skinny…

Awing has a special shape that helps lift it into the air. It’s curved on top and flatter on the bottom. It’s called an airfoil. An airfoil changes the direction the air flows. Air moving over the top of an airfoil follows the curve and flows downward. How does that help? There is a rule of motion that says every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If air meets a flat wing, it just keeps going straight. You may not feel it, but when you sit on a chair, you push down on it. The chair pushes back, and that’s what holds you up. When an airfoil forces air down, the air pushes back, lifting the wing. An airfoil’s shape also causes air to speed over the top. Air…

Birds don’t have fingers and they don’t have teeth. How do they pick things up? How do they eat? They use their beaks. Beaks are tough and strong. They can dig holes and crack nuts and cut meat. Beaks are sensitive, like human fingertips. They can feel when they touch a worm underground, or even when a worm wiggles in the dirt nearby. Beaks come in all shapes and sizes, but every bird has a beak. They use their beaks to crack open the shell of the egg when they’re hatching. They use their beaks to build their nests, to clean their feathers, and to carry food to their babies. But mostly, birds use their beaks to eat. You can even tell what kind of food a bird eats by…

As it flaps its wings downward, it spreads the wings wide and keeps the wing feathers together to create a large, solid surface. Each wing acts like a wide paddle to push against the air and push the bird up and forward. When the bird raises its wings back up, it bends them slightly so they don’t catch as much air, and it opens the feathers, like the slats on a window blind. The air slips through the openings instead of pushing down against the wing.…

Most birds build nests. But the nests aren’t for living and sleeping. Bird nests are for eggs and babies only. Match each rhyme with the bird and nest it describes, then turn the page to learn more. 1 I carry fish in my bright orange beak. A nest on a cliff is what I seek. 2 I peck a hole into a tree. Think how strong my beak must be. 3 I’m a big bird with a big stick nest. High on a roof or a tree is best. 4 To make my nest, I loop and weave Strands of grass and strips of leaves. 5 I have pink feathers and long legs And a mound of mud to hold my eggs. 1 Puffins spend most of the year at…