BirdNote; Big Bird - America's Favorite Flightless Bird

BirdNote®

Big Bird - Kind-hearted Celebrity

And America’s Favorite Flightless Bird

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote.

There’s at least one bird that nearly everyone knows on sight – toddlers, teens, millennials, seniors. And whether they live in the city or out in the country, they know this bird by his song.

[Big Bird sings “la la la . . . it’s a nice day on Sesame Street,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wssc3W6kVHs].

Big Bird stands 8 feet, 2 inches tall, with lemon-yellow feathers, pink legs, orange feet, and a long nose. Or is it a beak? He’s been a Sesame Street celebrity since 1969, cutting a colorful figure for pre-school fans and their parents across the world. Often found in the company of Snuffleupagus, when off-screen, he relaxes with his teddy bear, Radar, in a huge nest in back of a brownstone at 123 Sesame Street.

When Big Bird first saw the alphabet, he thought it was one really, really long word. But that didn’t slow him down. Just listen.

[Big Bird singing the alphabet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTvhKZHAP8U]

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ (spoken by Michael)

Big Bird is really a big kid with a kind heart, who makes friends everywhere he goes. He helps children feel okay about not knowing everything because, well, Big Bird is still figuring things out himself.

For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.

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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.

BirdNote’s theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.

Producer: John Kessler

Executive Producer: Sallie Bodie

© 2016 Tune In to Nature.org November 2018 Narrator: Michael Stein

ID# bigbird-01-2016-11-03 bigbird-01