Because a film must be visually appealing, younger characters seem to be more appealing than middle-aged and older subjects. Nat lives in a rural area with distance between his employer and himself, the school and his home and his town and the city. The film version likewise establishes a feel for the viewer that there is distance between the community of Bodega Bay and San Francisco, and the main characters home and the school and community. This distance helps establish a sense of isolation that is crucial for the feel of suspense. The plot is very different between the story and film version of "The Birds". Hitchcock may have been swayed by this fact. He also seems to put focus on the lovebirds that bring the couple together and put suspicion in the viewer that Melanie may have brought the trouble to the town by coming and bringing the lovebirds. Just before an attack, the lovebirds always sing loudly.
From almost the very beginning of Du Maurier's story, the birds are mentioned. She writes, " a message comes to the birds in autumn, like a warning. Winter is coming. Many of them perish. And like people who, apprehensive of death before their time, drive themselves to work-(602). Nat is in the opening scene of the story pondering the unusual behavior of the birds. Hitchcock, however, has the opening scene in a bird shop, but it is quite jovial and light between the main characters, Melanie and Mitch, and does not give the same foreboding sense that the original story gives right from the beginning. The sense of suspense is withheld from the audience in the film version till well into the story. Also, the first encounter with a violent bird happens much sooner in the story unlike the film. Nat is attacked in the 16th paragraph of the story when Du Maurier writes, "He went to the window for the second time, and now when he opened it there was not one bird upon the sill but half a dozen; they flew straight into his face, attacking him.
