The Answer

It is, indeed, "The Birds," Alfred Hitchcock's classic, based on the Daphne du Maurier short story, filmed on location in Bodega and Bodega Bay, California. The Potter School, located in the small inland town of Bodega, was built in the late 1800s and had been closed as a school by 1963, when Hitchcock resurrected it for the movie. It's now a private home that people like me visit and take pictures of.

If you recall, the birds begin gathering outside the schoolhouse, and the teacher, Annie Hayworth (played by Susanne Pleschett¹) must hustle them out the door ("quickly, now!") to safety. However, some of them are pecked mercilessly on their flight from the school, and one is virtually trampled, until Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren²) picks her up, in an act of selflessness. Good guesses!


¹ Who, I recently learned, was married to Tom Poston -- you know, the bumbling handyman in "Newhart"? -- at the time of his death.

² In advance of my pilgrammage to Bodega Bay, I caught Tippi Hedren as a head case in Hitchcock's "Marnie." I like "The Birds" better, but Hedren commands the screen in both films, in my opinion. She also has excellent hairdos, and in both "The Birds" and "Marnie" her coiffure get disshelved as a result of either birds or her own self-loathing. Interesting continuity.