Learn Italian: L'uccello spaventato è volato al nido. - The frightened bird flew to the nest.

This ties perfectly into our current lesson! The verb volare (to fly) uses essere when there is a specific destination involved, which is al nido (to the nest) here. If the sentence just described the activity of flying without a destination (like "the bird flew for hours"), you would use avere (ha volato).

Because we used essere, does the ending of volato matter?

Yes. When you use essere as the auxiliary verb in a compound tense like the passato prossimo, the past participle must agree in gender and number with the subject. Since l'uccello is masculine singular, the participle ends in -o (volato).

Is spaventato a verb or an adjective here?

It is acting as an adjective. Spaventato is the past participle of the verb spaventare (to frighten). Like most adjectives in Italian, it follows the noun it modifies (l'uccello) and agrees with it in gender and number.

Why use al nido instead of just a nido?