Summary

  • The Birds ending is left open to interpretation, creating an unnerving atmosphere that adds to the movie's unsettling nature.
  • Hitchcock's reason for the bird attacks is humanity's failure to appreciate and protect nature, a theme that remains relevant today.
  • The birds in the film can be seen as symbolic representations of various fears and insecurities, including ineffective governments and the corrupt human race.

With The Birds ending explained, the deeper themes and meaning of Alfred Hitchcock's chilling thriller become clear — and, once they are, so does the movie's reputation as a classic by one of the most influential directors in history. Loosely adapted from the 1952 short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, the 1963 masterpiece takes place in the seaside town of Bodega Bay, where things take a sinister turn when the local bird population starts swooping down to attack people. Screenwriter Evan Hunter took the premise of unexplained bird attacks from du Maurier’s source material but invented new complex characters and a twistier plot, which brought different themes to the table.

Hot off one of the biggest hits of his career with the pioneering slasher Psycho, Hitchcock set his sights on a different horror subgenre with The Birds. This movie brought the natural thriller into the mainstream, paving the way for movies like Jaws and Arachnophobia. The Birds’ scary attack sequences earned it a nomination for Best Special Effects at the 36th Academy Awards. The Birds’ final scene — in which the birds mysteriously stop their attacks — is utterly unnerving, and it's left open to interpretation. This was a deliberate decision on Hitchcock's part, and with The Birds ending explained, it's easy to see why it worked so well.

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What Happens In The Birds' Ending

The Birds Stop Attacking People Without Warning Or Explanation

Scared and injured survivors emerging from a house in The Birds

At the end of The Birds, socialite Melanie Daniels and her love interest, Mitch Brenner, barricade themselves in the Brenner family home with Mitch’s mother, Lydia, and his sister, Cathy. Throughout the night, the house is attacked by swarms of birds trying to break through the boarded-up doors and windows. When Melanie goes upstairs to check on a suspicious sound in the attic, she finds that the killer birds have broken through the roof, and she is ruthlessly attacked and nearly killed. After Mitch saves her, he insists on driving them all to San Francisco so that Melanie can have her wounds treated at a hospital.

As Mitch quietly prepares the car for the trip to San Francisco toward the end of The Birds, reports can be heard on the radio claiming the bird attacks have spread to nearby communities and the army might have to get involved. Then, all of a sudden, the birds stop their attacks. Hundreds and hundreds of birds all perch around the Brenner house and ominously stare as Melanie, Lydia, and Cathy join Mitch in the car, and they slowly drive away. It’s not clear why the birds have stopped attacking to let them leave, but it’s certainly disturbing — especially since it implies the avian aggressors are intelligent and their actions deliberate.

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Why Did The Birds Attack?

Hitchcock's Reason Predated Many Movies About Nature's Vengeance

When the birds start swooping down to attack the residents of Bodega Bay in The Birds, they don’t seem to have any particular reason. The inexplicable nature of the titular avians’ attacks in The Birds is a big part of what makes this classic Hitchcock movie so terrifying. But Hitchcock provided a concrete reason for the attacks. In 1998, Camille Paglia wrote a book about The Birds for the British Film Institute to commemorate the movie's 35th anniversary. Paglia quotes Hitchcock explaining the reason for the birds’ attacks: they wanted to exact revenge against humanity for taking nature for granted.

This interpretation of nature exacting vengeance against humankind has only gotten more and more relevant over time. As the human race has continued to deplete the planet’s natural resources, killing animals, drilling for oil, and tearing down rainforests, nature has responded through the destructive effects of climate change. The march of industry was praised as a significant innovation in the early 20th century, but all the factories were rapidly polluting the air. The feathered attackers in The Birds had finally had enough of that pollution and came down from the sky to maul the people responsible.

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What Do The Birds Represent?

Ineffective Governments, Sexuality And Humanity Itself Have Been Offered As Possible Allegories

The birds at a playground in The Birds

The eponymous creatures in The Birds can be seen to represent many things. They’re a vague, amorphous, bewildering threat to the human race that could stand in for any number of humanity’s real fears and insecurities. Given the timing of the movie, the birds could illustrate post-World War II anxieties about the government’s failure to protect its citizens. The car radio reports that the military is contemplating intervention in the widespread bird attacks, but this is long after Hitchcock’s villainous birds have killed people.

In Camille Paglia’s book, she interprets the birds as a metaphor for the primitive power of sexuality — particularly female sexuality, because “bird” is a British slang term for a woman. Melanie goes to Bodega Bay to pursue a romance with Mitch and ends up contending with his ex-girlfriend and his overbearing mother, in addition to a swarm of angry birds. More broadly, the birds could represent an indictment of the corrupt human race. They violently turn on humanity for no particular reason; the cause could be that humanity itself has a penchant for senseless violence.

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The True Story That Inspired The Birds

The Strange Occurrence Was Caused By Birds Consuming Toxic Algae

Melanie is attacked in an attic while holding a flashlight in The Birds

In addition to The Birds being adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s short story of the same name, the horror movie took inspiration from a true story involving birds plummeting from the sky and terrorizing the residents of a seaside town in California (via Live Science). The true story saw thousands of seabirds come crashing to the ground on the shores of North Monterey Bay. These birds threw up anchovies, flew straight into ground-level objects, and died in the streets. Hitchcock lived in the area at the time and called the local newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, for more information about this strange occurrence.

Since, in both cases, a coastal town in California is beset with unexplained attacks from above by the bird community, there are parallels between this real-life phenomenon and the classic Hitchcock movie. However, according to Sibel Bargu, a biological oceanographer at Louisiana State University, the real-life event wasn’t a coordinated assault: “It looks like attacking, but it’s actually crashing into walls because they are very disoriented.” The birds had consumed domoic acid, a toxin produced by multiple species of Pseudo-nitzschia, a type of algae. When ingested by birds, this toxic algae can cause confusion, disorientation, seizures, and ultimately death.

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The Real Meaning Of The Birds' Ending

The Lack Of Answers Adds To The Movie's Unsettling Nature

Birds on a telephone wire in The Birds

The true terror of The Birds is its ambiguity. The birds’ attack on humanity ends as mysteriously and inexplicably as it started. This is often the case with horror movies. The birds falling silent and staring at the survivors as they quietly leave town is as baffling to the audience as it is to the characters. It creates a suitably chilling atmosphere for the final scene, leaving viewers deeply disturbed as the end credits roll.

The Birds
PG-13

The Birds is a 1963 horror film from director Alfred Hitchcock, telling the tale of a small town in Northern California that is plagued by hundreds of violent birds. Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, and Jessica Tandy star in the film, which has since become one of Alfred Hitchcock's most iconic movies.

Release Date
March 29, 1963
Director
Alfred Hitchcock
Cast
Tippi Hedren , Suzanne Pleshette , Jessica Tandy , Veronica Cartwright , Rod Taylor
Runtime
119 minutes
Budget
$2.5 million
Studio(s)
Universal Pictures