Robot Bird

Robots are cool. Birds are cool (at least, sometimes). Let's make a Robot Bird!

Also, if you need to scout, something that flies without being too conspicuous is a good choice. Though anything supposed to fly on feathered wings, of course, isn't.

Examples of Robot Bird include:

Anime and Manga

• In one of the Sakura Taisen OAVs, Kohran kitbashes a steam-powered robot bird out of handy parts in order to send a written message. It blows up as soon as it delivers the letter.

Literature

• Guard-bird by Robert Sheckley has an attempt at complementing law enforcement with robots that, as the name implies, are birds.

Tabletop Games

• In Warhammer 40,000 'verse Imperium produces Grapplehawks - relatively light armored cyber-constructs capable of anti-gravity assisted flight, with embedded avian brains that provide ready instincts for flight and hunt. As the name implies, they are built not just for scouting, but for retrieval as well, and typically are equipped with shocker claws to this end. As such, they are mostly used by enforcers and Bounty Hunters to capture suspects, as well as Adeptus Mechanicus Explorators to collect whatever specimen picks their interest without having to chase it or make big holes in it. Several types appear in Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader.
  • Necromunda got Sheen Birds — decorative cyber-constructs that imitate living birds and appear to be more like a bird version of Cherubs, but autonomous enough that they can survive on their own in a hive (though get corrupted).

Video Games

• Strider Hiryu arcade has the Robot Hawk as an Assist Character.

Web Comics

• Gunnerkrigg Court has Tic-Tocs, whom the local robots classify as "mythical ornithonics" - they are artificial birds who usually stay away from everyone and only watch - nobody knows where they came from, what else they can do or to what purpose.
• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja with the bomber bird (it gets weirder from the next page).

Other Media

• The Enchanted Tiki Room attraction at the various Disney Theme Parks features hundreds of robot birds. In context, of course, one is supposed to accept that these are actually magical talking birds, but no few attendees are there as much to marvel at the technology as to follow the storyline.

Real Life

• Since at least 2014, Surveillance Drones have been available in bird-shaped form factors, ranging from bird-shaped "airplanes" to actual flapping ornithopters.
  • See, for example, this falcon drone from a firm called "Robirds".
  • Or the Bionic Bird from a company called XTIM.
• Even earlier, this 2011 TED Talk demonstrated a robot bird capable of flapping-wing flight.