Plot

Birds go berserk and turn against mankind.

A biology teacher and his wife take their two children to an island summer house to enable him to write an important thesis while getting over the death of their son. While they are there, large flocks of birds appear and begin to attack individual humans for no apparent reason. The town mayor (who is also the local doctor) refuses to believe that birds are responsible for the spate of injuries that are occurring but, before long, he has no option but to believe as the birds begin attacking larger groups of people.—Rhino <rhino@blueyonder.co.uk>

A family goes to spend their summer holidays in an isolated island home for the first time. The two young girls, Jill (Stephanie Milford) and Joanna (Megan Gallacher) Potter bitch and bicker about not having TV, or their expectations of being bored to death in that place where there will be no other children to play with. But their parents, biology teacher Ted (Brad Johnson) and office worker mum May (Chelsea Field) want to have a very quiet holiday and to run away from it all.

Unbeknown to them, a fisherman has just been attacked by seagulls. The seagulls began with his eyes, and then bit him until he's dead. Their dog, Scout, barks at the bloodied boat. Ted approaches Jill and tells her that the person in the boat can't possibly see or hear them as the boat is too far away: it floats away in silence.

Crows and ravens start gathering outside the home. Ted has a nightmare about a 4x4 road accident, in which his son died. Startled, he checks on the girls who are alright. Mum and dad go to work. Photographer Frank (James Naughton) seems to be attracted to May, hitting on her and dismissing Ted's job, even mispronouncing his name. Ted and his daughters go to buy things from town shopkeeper Helen (Tippi Hedren), who comments that there are no secrets in town, as everybody knows everybody's business. She says that there are only birds on the island.

Joanna arrives saying that she's seen the boat they saw the day before. The police are already there, and they think that the fisherman may have fallen to the sea, but Ted feels that it'd be impossible to leave so much blood out of a mere accident.

Back to the island, a raven is jumping around, and Scout sees it. Scout follows after it behind a haystack. Jill goes to have dinner but is worried about Scout, which is nowhere to be seen. Scout appears with a little bird in his mouth. Ted puts it in a cage and the girls want to take care of it. They tell Scout off, because he stole the roasted chicken from the table.

The girls go out riding their bikes to the forest. They leave their dad alone at home, trying to write his thesis but feeling uninspired. He notices the peeling-off walls, so he decides to start painting it. He jumps on a ladder and starts with the lantern hanging from the roof. A huge seagull smashes him in the face, so he falls to the floor. His returning daughters and Scout come to tend to him. He's alright, though. There's a little blood on his head. May and Frank arrive after work, and Ted says that he'll take May to work the following day.

May and Frank have a conversation sitting on the porch. May tells Ted to go see a doctor about the wound. A nurse (Sylvia Harman) tells him that Doc Rayburn (Richard K. Olsen) is also the mayor, so he's at the town bar. He says that the wound is nasty. He refuses to believe that birds are responsible for anything. Frank starts taking pictures of May, who tells him to stop kidding around. Frank and May have lunch together. Frank remembers how he realized he had talent for taking photos, and how Emily, his first wife, helped him to begin professionally.

The girls feel disgusted about a huge dead bird on the shore, but they also find the body of the man from the boat. The waves tip the body over, so the girls run away from the body screaming, with Scout in tow, and birds fly all over the place. They bump into another fisherman, alive and well, who also scares them. Soon the police are there. Everybody notices this other fisherman picking up the dead bird.

Ted and May offer some consolation to their girls, and then, they talk about how much they both miss Tommy. Ted goes to the kitchen to drink some liquor, and notices a bird tapping on the kitchen window. Another bird smashes itself against the window, and glass shards cut Ted in his hand. May runs to the kitchen when she hears the noise.

Ted goes to buy something, and offers his sympathies to Helen, who's lost a dear friend. She tells him that she'll give his children their favorite cookies if they bring sea shells to her. Ted says that he's cut himself with a glass, but Helen says that she's noticed the birds acting funny, and that one of them attacked a nephew of hers.

Birds are gathering. The girls run in the forest and reach the lighthouse. There, Karl (Jan Rubes), the fisherman that scared them earlier on the shore, appears out of nowhere, scaring them away. Back home, the small bird they found runs away, May says that in search of its family, but the girls are sad about that anyway. After the escape, May and Ted find a moment to talk and kiss each other. Birds gather outside their home, and Scott notices them, so he barks. Ted and May are trying to get intimate, but Scott prevents it. May gets annoyed, and she says that if she's bothering them, she'll get back inside.

The following day, Ted and the girls go bike riding. Karl is interested about another huge late bird. When Ted arrives home, he is just late to answer his wife's call. Frank uses this as an opportunity to offer to buy her a beer, and she accepts. Frank wonders what the problem is with Ted, who should be satisfied with what he has. May tells him that he can't get over their son Tommy's death, unlike her, who finally realized that life goes on. Frank suggests that she and Ted may be going in different directions in life. When May arrives home, Ted is awaiting her, and in fact he's mad at her because she was late and she didn't call. She says she called before, at five, but he didn't pick the phone up. May admits that she was for a drink with Frank. Ted wants her to cook dinner, and she replies that he should have done it. When he says that she would spend that newly-acquired free time with Frank, she throws a bag of frozen vegetables at him.

At that moment, somebody knocks on the door, so Ted goes to see who it is. May sighs. Ted opens the door, still with the vegetable bag in his hand. It's Karl Mengual, who offers him a huge fish he's just caught and cleaned. Ted offers him to have dinner with them, because that fish would go well with the frozen peas he's got for dinner. Karl entertains everybody with his stories of pirates, and the girls are not afraid of him anymore. He tells about the town female pirate. May sends the girls to bed.

Once alone, Ted asks about the island's birds. Karl says there have been many more recently. May listens to the conversation in a startled way. Karl says that people call that piece of land the Land's End. When he goes away, some birds fly by threateningly behind him.

May is finally teaching Frank how to use the computer program to edit his newspaper. Karl uses that as a cue to kiss her. She steps back. Frank says he's sorry. May isn't sure whether she wants it or not.

Many different birds are cooing outside the Potters' home. A bird knocks on the girls' bedroom window, so Jill and Joanna open a window to pick him up and put it in his nest. A lot of other birds use the opportunity to enter the bedroom and attack the girls. Their parents arrive immediately and the birds attack all four of them. May and girls escape while Ted stays inside until the birds go away of their own volition. Ted has to build wood blinds to secure all windows at home, while the ladies bury the dead birds. Ted finds remains of some strange bird. Frank calls May to tell her that he needs her, and that she should forget about the previous day. Ted overhears that conversation and tells her to go if she doesn't want to stay.

Karl appears and checks on the dead birds, which May was in the process of burying when she was interrupted by a phone call. One of the birds is a Black Neptune, who Karl says has never been seen anywhere around the island. On a map, they check where Helen's nephew was attacked.

Karl and Ted go talk to Rayburn, who dismisses their claims. Land's End is a fishing town with some scarce tourism, and he doesn't want the economy of the town to fail because of rumors about crazy birds' attacks. The bartender (Philip Loch) intervenes and brands them as crazy. Birds are hovering around all over the place. Karl drives Ted back home in his car. When Ted arrives, neither May nor the girls are there. He panics, but he sees them coming back from a walk.

Ted tells May that they can't stay at Land's End. May decides to start packing immediately.

During the night, Jill goes to check on Scout, barking at many birds on the fence. Joanna and Scout slowly go back home. Ted hits a huge eagle who attacks Joanna. All the birds go berserk. The birds attack Scout, hurting him. The birds try to enter the home. One of them cuts the phone and electricity, while Ted and the females tend to Scout. Even the grandfather's clock striking 9 scares them. The birds attack the lighthouse when Karl is inside. Karl falls down from the top of it, and the birds disable the light.

The nurse (Catherine Davies) tells Rayburn to check on the hurt family, who are burying Scout. Jo asks if he'll be in heaven with Tommy.

Birds gather around town as well, scaring Helen and Frank. The Potters' car won't start. Scott goes to Karl's to ask him for a ride to the ferry and finds him dead. He picks up the keys and drives to pick his family up, telling them that Karl can't come with them, because he has to care for his lighthouse, but the girls sort of guess what's happened to him, especially the 11-year-old Jill. The Potters arrive to Gull Island ferry, but there are too many people. Back in town, a gull attacks Frank, who is taking photos of the huge flock of birds.

While the birds attack people in the queue, Rayburn finally realizes that there's danger about to happen. He picks his shotgun, and is attacked by a huge bird. Frank kills that one, but the rest attack all the tourists. Rayburn tries to jump onto a boat that's leaving but misses and falls into the sea. One of the birds kills the driver of the ferry.

The bartender shoots another bird with a flare gun. It falls into the water burning, lighting up the gas that leaked there from a boat earlier. Everything burns, killing Rayburn, who was swimming away.

The Potters run away in another smaller boat. They reach another shore, where hundreds of birds are flocking together. They have to tip the boat around so that the birds won't get to them there. They have to go to Joanna's rescue, who was left behind somehow. The birds attack the boat until they decide to go to the land. The family looks at the birds going away sitting on top of the overturned boat.

---written by KrystelClaire