MovieChat Forums > The Birds (1963) Discussion > Why did the birds attack? Mystery solve...

Why did the birds attack? Mystery solved.


One of the inspirations for this film was an incident which took place in another coastal California town called Capitola:

In the summer of 1961 hundreds of birds attacked the town. Most of the birds were sooty shearwaters, a normally non-aggressive species that rarely comes to shore. Alfred Hitchcock was a regular visitor to nearby Santa Cruz and read about this episode. He went on to direct a film—The Birds —based on the idea of hundreds of birds attacking humans. The reason for this attack remained unknown for over 25 years until it was discovered that the birds had been affected by domoic acid, a toxin produced by red algae.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitola,_California#History

Further information for anyone interested:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/12/07/this-hitchcock-movie-was-inspired-by-crab-toxin-frenzy-in-capitola/

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Thanks very much. This is super interesting!

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🙂

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Means, the birdies were high as the kites.
🪁​ 🪁 ​🪁 ​🪁 ​🪁 ​🪁 ​🪁​ 🪁​ 🪁 ​🪁 ​🪁 ​🪁 ​🪁 ​🪁​ 🪁 ​🪁​

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Exactly. They were "high" on domoic acid. This means the birds were "dropping acid" even before the hippies. 🙂

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Hahahaha....these hippie birds were real trendsetters. ☺
Reminds to the crazy wallabies. 🦘​🦘​🦘​
https://theworld.org/stories/2011-08-02/stoned-wallabies-blamed-crop-circles-australia

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It says the sheep were also doing it. Too funny.

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Ohhh...totally forgot the sheep were in the poppy fields also.
Well, sheep are famous for knowing what's good (they really do).
Just follow the sheep herd. 🐏​ 🐑 ​🐏 ​🐑 ​🐏​
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/cannabis-munching-sheep-left-high-kite-4455124

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🙂

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Hitchcock couldn't have been aware of the cause, though, and had his own ideas about why the birds attacked.

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Hitchcock hints, in the trailer for the movie, that the birds are taken revenge for man having kept birds in cages. So presumably the wild birds are joining in, in a collective avenging warfare against humanity who has taken away the freedom of caged birds. But Hitchcock was never drawn on clearly giving a reason for the attacks after the movie was released.

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It would have been better if the birds acquired the power of speech, so they could have just said the reason why they turned on mankind

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I buy them, I take them home and I cook them.

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This and the novel is what the movie is based on. But there was no explanation given in the movie as to why the attacks occurred. It is left up to each viewer as to the reason.

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I had a gull swoop so close to my head this morning. Living in an estuary port town I've had this before. In future I shall keep the other side of the road where they hang out. On the way back I noticed two gulls stationed on rooves of a particular road I walk along often. They definitely don't like anyone on their side of the road. They've got youngsters nesting somewhere I expect.

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I don't know if this is true. Wasn't The Birds based upon a Daphne du Maurier short story of the same title written a few years earlier? Hitchcock was a fan of du Maurier; I believe Rebecca was written by her and Hitchcock made that into a famous movie with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in the 1940's. I think Jamaica Hotel was also a du Maurier. I think he liked her style and found that her writing adapted to his type of filmmaking well. When he read The Birds, he probably thought it would make a good plot in his post-Psycho period.

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I've always wondered what exactly triggered these birds after all of these decades?? 🤔 Next, we'll have an explanation for why the shark in JAWS acted the way it did?? The Novel JAWS suggested the shark was a baby Megalodon by the way it acted and how large it was..

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