50 years after ‘The Birds,’ Bodega Bay sites still delight

BODEGA BAY, Calif. – “Birds are not aggressive creatures, Miss. They bring beauty to the world …”

— Mrs. Bundy, to Melanie Daniels, in “The Birds”

When last seen — cinematically, that is — this pleasant town on the Sonoma County coast had been engulfed in Hitchcockian horror. Birds, birds everywhere. Crows, gulls and sparrows. Angry birds, not of the smartphone species.

Of course, that was in 1963, when the moviegoing public was macabrely captivated by Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller “The Birds,” filmed in Bodega Bay and its smaller cousin, Bodega, five miles inland.

Now, 50 years later, as the community makes plans for the golden anniversary of this silver-screen classic, an avian invasion once more has taken hold here.