The Birds (trailer)

My name is Alfred Hitchcock and I would like to tell you about my forthcoming lecture. It is about the birds and their age-long relationship with man. It will be seen in theatres like this across the country.

In my lecture I hope to make you all aware of our good friends, the birds. There's a noble history and through it all man has played a conspicuous part. This cave drawing is one of man's earliest sketches of his feathered friend.

One can see at once the loving care with which the artist depicted his subject. The story of man and his friends, the birds, is filled with many fine examples of ways in which these noble creatures have added to the beauty of the world.

If this plumed hat from the period of Charles I, how proud the birds must have been to have their feathers plucked out to Brighton Man's drab life. Here we have a later model, a refinement of the first.

Here a man or rather woman thought enough of the birds to have an entire one as a decoration. It's quite dead of course. Actually, the egg plays a very prominent part in my lecture. Not a word about which came first, however.

I don't believe in dealing with controversial matters. Thousands of years ago, man was satisfied merely to steal an egg from a nest and use it for food. Now he has perfected this process by imprisoning each hen in a separate cage and by scientifically manipulating the lights so that she doesn't fall into the rut of the old 24-hour day.

Thus, he can induce the bird to reach fantastic heights of eight production. Originally, there were many varieties of birds on earth. Some have become extinct. The great orc, the passenger pigeon and the famous dodo bird have all disappeared.