It’s an age-old question. Is that bird’s facey-lip bit a beak or a bill? When should you call a bill a beak, and a beak a bill? What even is a “facey-lip bit”? Why should you even care? All these questions and more will be answered here, in this blog, by me and some mates I asked at lunch.

Firstly, what’s a “facey-lip bit”? Well we’ve established that it’s either a beak or a bill, but what’s it made of? Beaks and bills are made up of two bony protrusions, covered in a layer of the same stuff that’s in our fingernails: keratin. The bony protrusions form an upper and lower mandible, and the keratinised final layer, or epidermis, forms around those mandibles into something known as the rhamphotheca. There are loads of different shapes, sizes and colours, all of which help that particular species of bird carve, scythe, skim and peck out a niche for itself.

What’s the difference between a beak and a bill, then? I’m going to set out a couple of ways I feel we could work out how to define the difference, and then we’ll hear from some bird-loving chums of mine. First up, I propose that we could define the difference by how those two words sound and how that marries up visually with the bird and its habitat in a kind of onomatopoeic way. Allow me to elaborate on what I’ve termed the Plumb method.

The word “beak” sounds pointy and stabby. It also sounds a bit pinchy. Birds that eat insects, like a blue tit, pinch and nip insects from leaves and tree bark. Rooks stab into the ground really hard for worms. Birds of prey and scavenging birds pluck and rip their prey. I’d say all these birds have beaks. I’d also extend this to birds that pick up grain or seeds from the floor like a woodpigeon or partridge, or from between the gaps in pinecones like a crossbill. “But Jack, it’s got ‘bill’ in its name!” Yes I can see that. Moving on…

Good examples - these are my benchmark birds (Photos: Flickr creative commons, Colin Frankland and nick goodrum)

The word “bill” sounds a bit like something floppy or wet, or as though the bird doesn’t annunciate. It also sounds like it doesn’t end in a sharp bit. Birds that dabble in the water, like a lovely shoveler duck, definitely have a bill. I imagine them gargling away with their big floppy bill. Clearly something like a spoonbill falls into the bill category too, but there are admittedly some trickier facey-lip bits to define using this extremely scientific method.

There are plenty of birds that are harder to define. Gulls, toucans and herons immediately spring to mind. Gulls live mostly on water and in chip shops. To best grab a chip from a child’s hand you need the dexterity of a beak. To eat what you’re supposed to eat at sea you need a bill. Toucans pinch fruit from trees and off the ground, but fruit is often wet and sloppy. Toucans also tend to live in rainforests, which are wet. Herons have possibly the most stabby facey-lip bit, but spend most of the time using it knee-deep in water. Let’s have a look at some other definitions.

Somewhere in the middle? (Photos: Flickr creative commons, Kevin Schofield and Phil McIver and Allan Hack)

The second way to define the difference between a beak and bill is with the Oxford English Living Dictionary. Clearly this method is significantly less interesting, but perhaps has slightly more merit than me just coming up with something.

The OELD defines a beak as, “A bird's horny projecting jaws; a bill.” And defines a bill as, “The beak of a bird, especially when it is slender, flattened, or weak, or belongs to a web-footed bird or a bird of the pigeon family.”

According to the Oxford English Living Dictionary, a bill is a beak and a beak is a bill. Thanks Oxford.

Seeing as we’re not getting any further forward, it’s time to bring in the “experts”. Please welcome, James, Emma and Catie, all superb humans who like birds, and people I regularly have lunch with.

I sent them each a list of birds that I feel have facey-lip bits that are difficult to categorise into either “beak” or “bill”.  You can find the list a bit later on and have a go yourself, but first let’s hear what they had to say and pick out some birds that they disagreed or agreed on.

Emma said, “I have no idea what the difference is but I feel like it has something to do with their nostrils.”

Interesting thought. It’s possibly something worth investigating in a follow-up blog. Perhaps the sound produced from their nostrils would correlate perfectly with the Plumb method, combining into the perfect defining principle? Emma went for “bill” for most of the birds, and disagreed with Catie on almost everything.

James said, “Personally, I’d say anything sticking out of a bird’s face is a beak, with a subcategory of beaks being ‘bills’. I’d use the word bill for ducks and possibly anything else with a spatulate bill (such as a spoonbill) but I imagine my usage is incredibly personal!

I’ve heard bill used for waders a lot more since I moved south, but I generally think of waders with long beaks as having ‘nebs’. If I were being overly curious as a child my Mum would tell me to ‘keep my neb out’.

I imagine, though, that archaically there wasn’t much difference between the two words. A hornbill has bill in the name, but I’d put that firmly in the beak category.”

That’s some interesting insight and a lovely bit of northern slang. Hornbill is very controversial. Going back to the Plumb method, I would place it in the beak category. Hornbills don’t spend much time in water, it looks like their facey-lip bit is pretty hard, and I reckon they could happily poke your eye out with it. James went for beak for everything, but suggested that bill or ‘neb’ could be used for certain birds as an alternative.

Catie said, “I realised I tend to think of birds in water as having bills and land birds as having beaks. A mallard comes to mind first when I hear bill, aside from my twin brother Bill.”

I’d tend to think similarly to Catie, minus the twin brother bit. Water birds and the sound of water fits well with the word “bill”. I’d say a puffin had a beak though, and I reckon those sand eels would agree! Catie and I largely agreed on the list.

Perhaps there's a scale, with "beak" on one end and "bill" on the other. A blue tit would be a solid "beak" – let's say a 1 – and a shoveler would be a huge "bill" – a 10 on the scale. Gulls and corvids might end up at 5, being super adaptable.

Finally, it’s over to you. Here’s the list of birds and groups of birds that I sent to my lunchtime pals. I feel these could cause some beaky-billed confusion.

  • Woodpigeon
  • Guinea fowl 
  • Turkey 
  • Capercaillie
  • Black-throated diver 
  • Penguins 
  • Petrels 
  • White stork 
  • Glossy ibis 
  • Grey heron 
  • Spoonbills 
  • Pelicans 
  • Hook-billed kite 
  • Vultures 
  • Coot 
  • Oystercatcher 
  • Lapwing 
  • Ring-billed gull 
  • Cuckoo 
  • Kingfisher
  • Green woodpecker 
  • Great-spotted woodpecker
  • Treecreeper 
  • Red-backed shrike 
  • Raven 
  • Swift 
  • Crossbill 
  • Hawfinch 
  • Rose grosbeak

Let us know what you think – is it a beak, or a bill? What other bird facey-lip bits are hard to define?

Jack

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