Why is sex called the birds and the bees? (NSFW?)

Good question. I found this with Google. This phrase is the name of parents’ traditional responses to their children’s question ‘where do babies come from’?. Not that parents usually resort to describing the actual mating of avians or insects – the name is just a generalized allusion to using the habits of creatures that children may be familiar with. I suppose it’s one step further on from ‘the stork brings them’. The euphemistic avoidance technique, which may call on references to eggs or the mysterious ‘pollination’, is of course just confusing to children, who are well able to cope with the real ‘facts of life’.

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair -
The bees are stirring – birds are on the wing -
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

It’s a very good question, @Pachy answered it well, I think it’s perhaps a polite way to explain things. Imagine the horror on a five year old if you show him porn and than say, “and that may boy that’s one the the many ways you have been conceived.” So birds and bees is probably the more polite way to explain something.

Because as much as people like sex and expose them ex parte by way of the media, sex is suppose to be bad, or at least seen as that to kids, so you can’t speak frank about it. Better to let them experiment with it with someone else just as clueless so they can learn their mistakes together.

Because us blokes love to crow about it & it leaves us buzzing

Wikipedia offers some possible origins. But they are mostly about the “busy-ness” of birds and bees in spring. I prefer to think Cole Porter is responsible.

when we were a more agrarian society, kids were more familiar with the fact that the birds laid eggs in the nest, and the bees assisted the flora to reproduce. If a kids were on a farm, or some other rural setting, they would be aware of the animals doing something. By the time the “awkward” questions were asked, it was reasonable to explain by drawing parallels with “the birds and bees”.

Some plants are wind-pollenated. That’s true of most conifers, and it’s also true of many grasses. Such plants are highly evolved; they depend on nobody and nothing for their reproductive functions. Unfortunately, such plants also cause bad reactions for allergy sufferers, because they release all that pollen into the air.

Other plants are cross-pollenated by, well, birds and bees (and other insects). Critters unknowingly collect pollen from the anthers of one plant and move along, to deposit the pollen into a stigma.

So, the “birds and the bees” explains the mechanics of sexual intercourse.

“Birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love”

Duh.

I’d never seen that before, but it entertained the spit out of me.

Yeah, sure, karaoke was a recent invention.

C.P. obviously never heard of P.C. (just the opening)

Heaven. Billy

Eartha-y.

Okay, even though I’m having my time of the week, I’ll shut the flock up.

Beats hell out of the whole cabbage patch thing. Even the stork is better than that.