Birds on Film

One difficulty faced by trainers is that, with the exception of chickens, pigeons, doves, and ducks, federal wildlife law prohibits the use of domestic birds in film production. That means that many species must actually go into make-up before appearing on film because American birds have different coloring. For example, foreign crows and ravens often have to be temporarily painted black to resemble their North American cousins. Increasingly, however, such changes can also be made digitally during post-production.
Finally, of course, like all animal actors, the use of birds on contemporary studio film productions is closely supervised by the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). This is in sharp contrast to the treatment of animals during the early days of American film. During the silent era and well into the classic studio period, birds and animal actors were all too often mistreated for the sake of creating an exciting shot.

How It Was Done -- A Brief Look at "The Birds"

Inspired by a Daphne DeMaurier short story, Alfred Hitchcock singlehandedly created the "animal attacks" horror subgenre with his 1963 hit, "The Birds." The movie depicted an apocalyptic world in which our feathered friends had suddenly declared systematic war on mankind. After mechanical birds were tried and then discarded for looking too fake, real birds were captured in the wild and brought to the set.
The ASPCA did supervise the shoot but, at times, the human actors had legitimate concerns about their own treatment. Since the birds were wild, it was all too easy to get them to attack humans and stars Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren had more of their share of minor scratches and bites. Moreover, since birds, when feeling threatened, really will tend to go for a mammal's eyes, there was real concern about possible serious injuries. No doubt, that left the actors feeling that, from that point on, if there were going to see birds it was from a great distance or in very secure bird cages.