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Birds · entry 47 of 52
A bird's crop stores food for a while before it reaches the stomach.
The longer version
The crop is an expanded pouch of the gullet where food waits after swallowing. It lets a bird eat quickly out in the open and digest later in cover, and it softens hard seeds with moisture before they pass on to the stomach. Muscles move the contents onward in small batches.
In pigeons and some others the crop lining produces a fatty, cell-rich secretion fed to the young, sometimes called crop milk. Birds of prey use the same pouch to hold a meal and later cast up the indigestible parts as a pellet. Because the crop sits ahead of the stomach, a full one shows as a bulge at the base of the neck.
Where this entry sits
Here you will find feathered trivia about flight, migration, nests, eggs, and the songs birds sing. Expect short surprising facts on penguins, owls, hummingbirds, and other familiar birds from gardens, forests, wetlands, and distant coastlines. The full list sits on the Birds page, where every entry is listed in order.
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