The Birds

Daphne du Maurier’s short story “The Birds” was first published in her 1952 collection, The Apple Tree: A Short Novel and Several Long Stories. It is a Gothic horror story about a man who must protect his family from the brutal and inexplicably organized attacks perpetrated by the birds. Du Maurier’s tale evokes the social isolation of individuals in 1950s England, the British civilians’ memories of helplessness during the Blitz, and the fear of destructive natural forces. Alfred Hitchcock’s famous film The Birds (1963) adapts the story to great effect, but it is a loose adaptation that du Maurier did not appreciate.

Content Warning: This short story takes place after World War II and depicts the effects of war on the central character. Additionally, descriptions of the birds’ attacks may be unsettling for some readers.

Du Maurier was a 20th-century British author whose novels and short stories often explore complicated themes through the lens of a single character’s personal experience (a technique showcased most famously in her 1938 novel Rebecca, which was also adapted into a film by Hitchcock). In “The Birds,” this character is Nat Hocken, for whom there is little exposition: He has a “war-time disability” that qualifies him to receive a pension; he “did not work full-time at the farm”; and, “[a]lthough he was married with children, his was a solitary disposition; he liked best to work alone” (59). The third-person omniscient narrator does not explain the nature of Nat’s disability or exactly when he got it, nor does the narrator immediately identify Nat’s location or the names of Nat’s family members. Details about Nat, his community, and his history emerge only as Nat thinks about them. Readers must therefore gather clues from Nat’s memories and opinions to understand his life, while also following Nat’s activities and observations as the plot unfolds in real time. The effect of du Maurier’s narrative choices—the subjective point of view, the ambiguity of the characters and surroundings—is an unsettling experience that lays the foundation for the outlandish horror that is “The Birds.”

This guide cites the story as it is printed in the New York Review of Books’ 2008 collection of nine stories by du Maurier, Don’t Look Now: Stories.

“The Birds” begins with the unnatural event of the wind changing overnight on the third of December, abruptly bringing winter. The narrator introduces the primary protagonist, Nat, and his situation in life. Nat enjoys birdwatching during his lunch breaks, especially in autumn:

In autumn those [birds] that had not migrated overseas but remained to pass the winter were caught up in the same driving urge, but because migration was denied them, followed a pattern of their own. Great flocks of them came to the peninsula, restless, uneasy, spending themselves in motion; now wheeling, circling in the sky, now settling to feed on the rich, new-turned soil; but even when they fed, it was as though they did so without hunger, without desire. Restlessness drove them to the skies again (59).

Nat notices that the birds are more restless than usual that autumn, and more numerous: “Always, in autumn, they followed the plough, but not in great flocks like these, nor with such clamour” (60-61). The farmer for whom Nat works has also noticed it, but he ascribes the birds’ strange behavior to an imminent change in weather: “It will be a hard winter” (61). The narrator does not name the farmer; that information, like much else in the story, becomes apparent as Nat progresses through the story’s events.

The farmer is right about the weather, for the hard winter arrives that night with the east wind, “cold and dry” (61). It is on that night that Nat and his family experience a barrage of bird attacks. The assailants attack through the windows three times and in growing numbers, as if testing the vulnerabilities of the cottage and the humans who occupy it. In the third and worst attack, a whole flock invades the children’s room and attacks both of Nat’s children, Jill and Johnny. Nat battles with the invaders, but he soon takes a defensive position, always focused on protecting his eyes, which seem to be the birds’ main target.

At dawn, the birds retreat but leave dozens of their small fellows dead on the floor. The land has altered; “[b]lack winter had descended in a single night” (65). Nat’s family is safe, although Johnny has scratches on his face from the birds’ attempt to blind him. Nat tries to calm his wife—whose name the narrator never reveals—by insisting that the birds’ behavior was a result of the weather, and he tells the children that the east wind made the birds act strangely. Internally, Nat worries the birds will try another assault. He tells his wife to keep the windows and doors shut, then he walks Jill to the school bus stop before going to the farm to make inquiries.

At the farm, Nat converses with Mrs. Trigg, the farmer’s wife; and Jim, the cowman. Mrs. Trigg remarks on the source of the sudden chill, wondering whether it came from Russia or, as an announcer claimed on the wireless (a radio receiver), the Arctic circle. Nat relates the previous night’s events, which Mrs. Trigg tries to rationalize and does not seem to fully believe the account. Although her reception of his story is frustrating to him, Nat understands how it sounds to her, for “[h]ad it not been for those corpses on the bedroom floor, […] he would have considered the tale exaggeration too” (68). Nat asks Jim about the birds, but Jim is not interested. These interactions remind Nat of how, after the air raids of World War II, those who hadn’t personally endured the raids seemed unable to fully appreciate the devastation; Mrs. Trigg and Jim didn’t witness the birds’ attack, so the idea doesn’t even seem possible to them.

Nat goes home and clears the children’s room of the dead birds, placing the bodies in a sack. Unable to dig the frozen ground to make a grave, he heads to the beach to throw the bodies into the sea, where hundreds of gulls are riding the breakers at ebb tide in line formation, waiting. Nat hurries back to the cottage and learns that the government has issued a statement on the wireless about birds congregating en masse all over the country; he hears the Home Office reporting the eerie phenomenon, offering an explanation for it, and advising listeners to fortify their homes. Feeling vindicated for taking the situation seriously, Nat boards the windows and blocks the chimney, activities that bring back memories of preparing for the Blitz.

More wireless reports come in, the announcer stating that birds are causing confusion and dislocation everywhere. Nat suspects that the government will focus its aid on towns and cities rather than the countryside, so he strategizes for making household supplies last during the coming siege. He knows he can only rely on himself for help.

At high tide the gulls rise, darkening the sky prematurely. Nat goes to the bus stop to wait for Jill, but while there, he witnesses masses of birds dividing into groups that fly in the four cardinal directions. Feeling an instinctual dread that the birds are organizing some kind of martial stratagem (though on whose orders, he cannot say), Nat goes to a callbox to telephone the exchange; he leaves a message about the birds’ intentions with the operator, who will report the message to the authorities. The operator sounds unconcerned by the news. Jill and several other children arrive on the bus, but before heading home with Jill, Nat tells the children that they should go home immediately; they argue with Nat but soon comply.

Nat and Jill walk homeward (too slowly, in Nat’s opinion), and the gulls circle ever closer. By chance, Nat and Jill come across Mr. Trigg in his car. Mr. Trigg takes Jill to the cottage, while Nat continues his journey home on foot. After Mr. Trigg drops Jill off and drives back, he again stops to meet Nat and speak with him about the birds. The townspeople, reports Mr. Trigg, are saying that the Russians must have found a way to poison Great Britain’s birds to make them violent; Nat is unconvinced. The farmer is convinced that a few shots from his gun will scare the gulls away—and Mrs. Trigg, according to her husband, is making jokes about cooking gulls. They are confident that a little shooting will make the gulls fly for cover, so there is no need for boarding the windows. Nat urges him to board the windows, but the farmer playfully calls Nat “windy” and leaves with a joking promise of gull breakfast in the morning.

When Nat enters the field adjacent to his house, the gulls launch into battle. They dive at him, pecking and clawing, as they aim for his head: “[W]ith each attack, they became bolder. And they had no thought for themselves. When they dived low and missed, they crashed, bruised and broken, on the ground. As Nat ran he stumbled, kicking their spent bodies in front of him” (80). He focuses on protecting his eyes as he runs to the cottage door. A gannet takes aim at him when he reaches the cottage, but he makes it inside just before the gannet can reach its target.

The second half of the story follows Nat’s efforts to strengthen the cottage against the onslaught and to keep up his family’s spirits. Reports from the wireless grow worse until the broadcast ends altogether. The Hockens hear airplanes overhead, possibly a reconnaissance mission. There is then the sound of planes crashing, most likely the result of bird strikes; the mission was “suicidal,” Nat thinks. He observes the birds’ battle strategy and realizes it depends on the tide: At high tide the birds attack, and at ebb tide they rest. During the hours of ebb tide, when the gulls ride the waves and their comrades bide their time on land, Nat can safely go outside to further fortify the exterior of the cottage or to gather supplies.

When Nat visits the farm after the gulls’ first night of bombardment, he brings his family with him because his wife cannot bear to be left behind with the children, but he insists they hide while he enters the property. He suspects the Triggs and Jim are dead since no smoke comes out of the farmhouse’s chimneys and the cows are roaming around the yard, their udders painfully full. Nat is correct. Jim’s body, “what was left of it” (96), is in the yard. It looks like Jim was in the process of shooting at the birds when he died. Mr. Trigg’s body is by the house telephone, and Mrs. Trigg is upstairs with a broken umbrella beside her, but Nat cannot bring himself to look at her corpse. The family loads up with supplies, while Nat shields his wife and children from the gruesome sight of the birds’ victims.

Once they have unloaded everything they took from the farm, Nat checks the perimeter of the cottage, testing and fixing areas to make it an impenetrable shelter. There are no signs of aircrafts—no signs of help. Nat has little confidence in the authorities, as if he has been disappointed by them before: “No plan, no real organization. And we don’t matter down here. That’s what it is. […] We’ve got to wait and take what comes” (98-99). Once again, he looks to the sea, and his eyes deceive him. He thinks navy ships are coming to help, but then realizes it’s the gulls rising. It’s high tide.

Safe inside the cottage, Nat and his wife wonder about other European countries, and Mrs. Hocken hopes the Americans will come to help them. Nat plans out more methods to protect the windows; he listens to the birds stabbing the front door with their beaks and wonders what kind of knowledge they possess—what ancient, collective memories their species have accreted over the eons. He lights up his last cigarette, which he once said he would save for a rainy day, and throws the empty cigarette packet into the kitchen fire. He watches the packet burn.