To tell you the truth, this game is the first time I've known that you can jump on the Booty Bird in order to get his items, I never tried it in even DKC 3 on the SNES, a 103% video walkthrough on Youtube showed me you could do this, I either never thought to try it, was afraid they were an enemy type who damaged you no matter what area you touched them, or it could be they were never close