Cast member Doodles Weaver was the uncle of actress Sigourney Weaver, who worked with Veronica Cartwright in Alien, and with Tippi Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith, in Working Girl.
Dinar, France, hosts a British Film Festival, with a Golden Hitchcock as the prize. There is also a statue of Alfred Hitchcock (standing on what appears to be a very large egg, and with birds on each shoulder) near the beach in Dinard. The statue is moved down to the beach for the actual festival.
For the scene in which Annie is killed, Suzanne Pleshette who played her told Alfred Hitchcock it would look good if her ear was all bloody and hanging off, so he sent her to the prop department. When it came to shooting the scene, Hitchcock had Annie facing the other way, so the viewer never sees the ear, which Pleshette recalled "was part of his delicious sense of humor."
Hitchcock originally wanted Farley Granger for the role of Mitch Brenner but he was unavailable because of theatrical commitments.
Hitchcock's film and the original story by Daphne Du Maurier share no characters and in fact have only in common the bay-side town setting, the bird's bizarre behavior and their inexplicable tendency to launch frenzied attacks, fall dormant only to attack again later. In Du Maurier's story the main character discovers that this pattern is directly related to the rise and fall of the tides and uses this to their advantage, as opposed to the film which seems to follow the same pattern but never makes a direct connection. Also the original story takes place in Britain and centers around a man protecting his wife and two children at their isolated cottage home, as opposed to the film which centers on the spirited but troubled city dweller Melanie Daniels who travels to the California coast on a whim.
In May 2001, the son of "The Birds" novelist Daphne Du Maurier reported that he and his wife were being terrorized by seagulls nesting outside their cottage in Cornwall, England.
In one of the first scenes, Tippi Hedren can be seen crossing the street to the pet shop. As she does, she disappears behind a sign for a moment and reappears on the other side. Alfred Hitchcock so hated working on location that he used this moment to seamlessly cut to a studio shot.
In the The Birds II: Land's End, Tippi Hedren does not play her character in this film of Melanie Daniels but a character named Helen.
In the end, when Melanie is carried outside, Mitch opens a door. There was no door used in filming, and it was all done with light effects to make it look as if Mitch opened the front door.
In the film, it appears as if the schoolhouse is within the bay town limits. The frightened children are clearly shown running downhill toward the town and the water. In real life, the schoolhouse used for those shots is located five miles southeast and inland of Bodega Bay in the separate township of Bodega, California.
Melanie wears the same green suit throughout the movie, so Tippi Hedren was provided with six identical green suits for the shoot.
Mitch Zanich, owner of the Tides Restaurant at the time of shooting, told Hitchcock he could shoot there if the lead male in the film was named after him, and Hitch gave him a speaking part in the movie. Hitchcock agreed: Rod Taylor's character was named Mitch Brenner, and Mitch Zanich was given a speaking part. After Melanie is attacked by a seagull, Mitch Zanich can be heard saying to Mitch Brenner, "What happened, Mitch?"
Near the end of the film, when Mitch carries Melanie down the stairs, it is actually Tippi Hedren's stand-in being carried by Rod Taylor. Hedren was in the hospital recovering from exhaustion after a week of shooting the scene where Melanie is trapped in the upstairs room with the birds.
Originally, a scene took place between Melanie and Mitch after Lydia Brenner left for the Fawcett farm. This scene was shot but ultimately cut from the film. All that survive are the script pages and some production photographs. The script pages and photographs appear as a bonus feature on the DVD version the movie.
The automobile driven by Tippi Hedren is an Aston Martin DB2/4 drop-head coupe.
The classic scene in which Tippi Hedren watches birds attacking the townsfolk was filmed in the studio from a phone booth. When Melanie opens the phone-booth door, a bird trainer had trained gulls that were taught to fly at it. Surviving photos of the shooting of the scene were published in the book "Hitchcock at Work" by Bill Krohn.
The climactic scene, in which Tippi Hedren's character is attacked in the bedroom, took seven days to shoot. Hedren said, "It was the worst week of my life." The physical and emotional tolls of filming this scene were so strong on her that production was shut down for a week afterward.
The crow that sits on Alfred Hitchcock's shoulder in all of the promo photos was not in the movie. It was purchased after the movie had wrapped. A studio staff member bought it when he spotted the tamed bird on the shoulder of a 12-year-old boy walking down the street. The boy was offered about $10 but was hesitant until he discovered why it was needed.
The famous poster art for the film where a woman is pictured screaming is not Tippi Hedren but is in fact Jessica Tandy taken from the scene where the birds come down the chimney.
The film does not finish with the usual "THE END" title because Alfred Hitchcock wanted to give the impression of unending terror.