Melanie Daniels is a beautiful blonde who arrives in Bodega Bay in pursuit of the handsome and eligible Mitch Brenner. But love is not the only thing in the air when thousands of birds descend upon the town, attacking and terrorizing its residents. Soon Melanie and Mitch are fighting for their lives against a deadly, unexplainable force in this spine-tingling portrait of nature at its most powerful and ruthless.

Scottie Ferguson, a San Francisco police detective, is forced to retire when a freak accident gives him a severe case of acrophobia. Ferguson is hired by a rich shipbuilder to follow his wife who is behaving suspiciously and might be planning suicide. He falls in love with her, but she is later murdered and Ferguson becomes demonic in his desire to re-create her in another woman.