Mouth Flaps (Patreon)

Staraways avians can pick up and manipulate things with their beak and tongue, which is not as gross as it sounds because they produce almost no saliva (there's not much use for digestive fluids in your mouth if you swallow bites of food whole). The notch in their bill evolved to help with this, and to keep junk from getting into the tongue groove through the notch, they have 2 cartilaginous flaps that close over the tip of the tongue when it's not being used.

Regardless of their dry mouths, most avians are choosy about what they will pick up with them. Possibly disease-carrying objects are a no-brainer, but many avian religions and cultures have elaborate rules about what you can and cannot hold with your mouth, sometimes with additional rules about whether or not your tongue can touch it. Skimmers, surprisingly, have the least compunctions about it as a group, whereas most pygmy cultures won't pick things up in their mouths at all.