- We finally get to the bird attacks.
- It's Cathy's party. While the kids play, Mitch and Melanie climb up the bank by the seaside.
- Mitch tries to get Melanie to stay for dinner.
- They flirt.
- Melanie reveals that she does various serious things like raise money for a Korean boy to go to school. She even takes classes at Berkeley to improve herself.
- They have a conversation in which you learn that Melanie's mother abandoned her and she's wounded and a deep thinker. Hitchcock put the scene in over the objections of Evan Hunter, the screenwriter.
- We think Evan had a point.
- Mitch and Melanie head back down to the party, where the kids are playing blind man's bluff, with Annie supervising and Cathy blindfolded.
- Both Annie and Lydia give Mitch and Melanie dark, broody looks.
- But, their dark broodiness is interrupted when a seagull whooshes down and bops Cathy in the head.
- Here's our first full-on bird attack, just about halfway through the film.
- Much chaos, balloons popping, children running. The whole horror film nine yards.
- Listen to the bird calls. They sound very realistic, but if you pay attention, you can tell they're synthesized.
- The birds fly away, and Melanie and Mitch agree they don't know what is up with the birds.
- Mitch uses the opportunity to convince Melanie to stay for dinner. Clever, that Mitch.