A bird in profile, drawn the way a birdwatcher still would: a round head with a watchful eye, a hooked beak, a curved back, and long tail feathers trailing behind. Chinese writing actually kept two separate bird pictographs from the start: 隹 for stubby-tailed birds like doves, and 鸟 for anything with a proper tail to show off.
A piece of culture
The golden crow in the sun Long before anyone spoke of a man in the moon, Chinese myth put a bird in the sun: 金乌, the "golden crow", a three-legged bird said to carry the sun across the sky each day, is still a poetic name for the sun itself in classical poetry. It is why ancient painters so often tucked a small bird inside a circle standing for 日 — sun and bird, two pictographs from this same chapter, drawn from the same old story.
Use it in a real word
水鸟
shuǐniǎo · seoi2 niu5
waterbird; waterfowl — literally "water bird"; you already know 水