Cherrytree1118

Best answer as chosen by Asker / Ratings
The bird creatures you are referring to are called snagrets. They are like a bird-snake hybrid and just love to eat pikmin. The area you are in only has a few (about 3 or 4) so they aren't infinite. The way to defeat them is by having your pikmin attack their heads: Attacking the necks dose absolutely nothing. The part you are looking for is inside one of the snagrets, so you must kill it to get the part out. More often than not, it's in the snagret nearest the ledge that leads back to the ship, so you can probably run past the first few, and attack only that one.