A pelican can fit a lot of fish in its beak.

Pelicans Order PelecaniformesFamily PelecanidaePelicans are large water birds with a distinctive pouch under their beak.

So we created a way to find out, and I got my first look at that famous beak in action.

Parrots Order PsittaciformesFamily PsittacidaeParrots are small to large birds with a characteristic curved beak shape and a generally erect stance.

Finches Order PasseriformesFamily FringillidaeFinches are small to moderately large seed eating passerine birds with a strong beak, usually conical and in some species very large.

A hen s beak is full of nerve tissue it is, after all, her principal means of relating to her environment but no anesthetic or analgesic is used to relieve the pain.

The term is owed to Niko Tinbergen, who did his famous experiments with gulls, where he found that that orange spot on the gull s beak if he made a bigger, oranger spot the gull chicks would peck at it even harder.

I blew it up to the actual size, and I began using that, along with all the other reference that I had, comparing it to it as size reference for figuring out exactly how big the beak should be, exactly how long, etc.

I became obsessed with the object not just the beautiful photograph itself, and the color, the shallow depth of field, the detail that's visible, the wire you can see on the beak there that the conservator used to put this skeleton together there's an entire story here.