Birds (advertisement) Birds (advertisement) "Birds" is an award-winning television commercial for the Washington Lottery; it won a Silver Lion at the 2009 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, and "Best in Show" at the 2009 National ADDY Awards. "SHOOT" magazine placed it on their Top 10 list for Summer 2008. First broadcast in June 2008, it depicts three flightless birds—a penguin, a chicken, and an emu—being taken hang-gliding (the chicken and the penguin are shown wearing harnesses strapped to the chest of the glider pilots; the emu's harness is suspended between two gliders). The images of the birds in mid-air were produced by
Hesperornithes Hesperornithes Hesperornithes is an extinct and highly specialized group of aquatic avialans closely related to the ancestors of modern birds. They inhabited both marine and freshwater habitats in the Northern Hemisphere, and include genera such as "Hesperornis", "Parahesperornis", "Baptornis", "Enaliornis", and "Potamornis", all strong-swimming, predatory divers. Many of the species most specialized for swimming were completely flightless. The largest known hesperornithean, "Canadaga arctica", may have reached a maximum adult length of over . Hesperornitheans were the only Mesozoic avialans to colonize the oceans. They were wiped out in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, along with enantiornitheans and all other non-avian dinosaurs,