Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre at the Natural History Museum

[Ad- gifted experience] Both Dann and I absolutely love exploring new places and new features within places we have visited before. It’s been a while since we’ve been to the Natural History Museum so we were delighted to be invited back to see the Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre exhibition. This is a ticketed exhibition within the free museum, allowing you to learn more about birds throughout history and how the future might affect them. As someone who grew up in a place where we didn’t learn about dinosaurs, this was a very interesting exhibition.

Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre has a really fantastic flow to it. At the start, there is a sort of clear movement forward, where you can read about where birds have come from through waved signs, in the sides of the room. There are tons of fossils and skeletons of dinosaurs that birds have come from, along with information around the first few birds that have ever existed. There are also touch areas all throughout, allowing you to touch the outside of replicas of bird eggs, beaks, and much more. These touch areas are very nice, especially when it comes to keeping younger ones entertained, and it feels really interactive!

Soon, this area opens up to a few bigger, more free flowing places, as we made our way to modern day. There are a bunch of bird beaks, talking about how birds have evolved to be better at eating the food that is available to them and how their wings have changed. There are a lot of taxidermy birds of all sizes on display, along with eggs and nests. It turns out, birds have a bunch of different types of nests that they create, including a cave bird that makes nests out of their own spit, which sticks to the sides of the walls of the caves. These nests are harvested for bird nest soup! I had never actually heard of this type of nest at all.

The next area started talking about how difficult it is to be a bird. You see, birds are extremely intelligent creatures, however they have been hunted throughout history by people, for their meat, nests and feathers. They have had other animals take their eggs and food sources, making it difficult for many of them to survive. When it comes to hiding acorns for the winter, often their acorns are found by other animals or can be forgotten, which can result in them going hungry The Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre exhibition actually had a little game about hiding acorns which had you being a bird for a little bit! There were also areas where you could smell wax that birds create, to help deter other animals, and a few areas where you needed to look into a box to see pictures of birds that contained dead or triggering animals. This sort of care to creating an educational space that is appropriate for all ages is very well made, especially as the more gore-y pictures are quite hidden and optional. There is also a sort of enclosed area where you can press a button to see a projection of a swarm of birds flying around!

The current state of birds moves to another area that tells you how we can help birds. There are statistics on things like how many birds a year die because of cats hunting them, but also a very easy call to action telling you to put a collar with a bell on your cat if you are going to let your cat outside (or just have indoor cats). These very simple call to actions feel really easy to implement; adding a reflector to your windows so birds don’t run into them or cutting down on your chicken consumption all are small changes that can make a big impact. With so many birds not having the resources to continue to thrive, doing our part to keep them alive is very important.

The next section of the Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre exhibition actually highlights what the future could be like. There is a three minute experience where all of the walls showcase parts of the world after energy has been moved to renewable resources and birds are able to thrive due to their resources being in abundance. There are so many fantastic sounds and scenes that can captivate you and convince you that this future is one you want. It’s a really inspiring part of the exhibition and does a great job of wrapping up everything that you’ve learned and showing you what the future could be like.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!