I tried rook for the R clue and it didn't take. I got all pissy, looked it up on Wikipedia and saw that the rooks are slightly smaller. Well played Jetpunk
They peck on trees because that is woodpecker morse code. They send secret messages that way. I've actually cracked their code and have covertly listened in on some woodpecker conversations. They tell a lot of knock-knock jokes.
Funny, I tried that first too (just from the description, otherwise I had no clue), then tried common extensions for birds. Didn't have to try hard though as I got it straight on the first attempt. Lucky guess!
I wouldn't say magpies and ravens are merely "like" crows, given that they are crows; the word "crow" refers to the genus. I'm guessing you're comparing them with the carrion crow (which a lot of people just refer to as a crow), but a more accurate wording would be "A type of crow with black and white plumage" or "A large species of crow".
I thought this, and then checked. Corvidae is a family which contains crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepies, choughs, and nutcrackers.
Do Yellowhammers sound like Beethoven's fifth? I always thought they went "Little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheese" whereas Beethoven's 5th goes something like "Da-da-da-DAAA".
The many flamingos I saw in the extreme south of Patagonia would beg to differ with this quiz on being designated 'tropical'. Well they would if they could talk and had any concept of such things. But yeah, some flamingos may be found in the tropics, but the majority of their range is outside the tropics and in some cases waaaaay outside the tropics.
The stork-delivery story has been around for more than 100 years. Even if you never heard it in real life, you could've learned it from, say, watching Dumbo in the 1940s.
zizizizizizi zeee – sounds more like a rusty bike chain than Beethoven's 5th to me.
For x you could look if you can find a good clue for a Xenops. It would probably be the least guessed of all these but at least you'd have a bird for every letter.
I saw "spectacular plumage" and immediately tried "Parrot." When it didn't work, I tried to figure out what else I could call the Norwegian Blue that would start with "P," and then the rest of the clue sunk in.
Yellowhammer, that would be "a little bit of bread and nooooo cheese!" Or maybe, "Bauer miet mich, Bauer, miet mich!" Beethoven's Fifth, that did not ring a bell!
For x you could look if you can find a good clue for a Xenops. It would probably be the least guessed of all these but at least you'd have a bird for every letter.
Oh, and cranes are waterfowl? That's news to me.
South American bird that starts with an X.