Yes indeed. If you ever get to see a parrot close up, watch how it uses its tongue to manipulate and de-husk seeds in its beak. Scale this down in size and it applies to nearly all seed-eating birds.

Then ask yourself if you need your tongue for anything except talking and that will provide the rest of your answer.

Edit: sorry - that's not quite true, because birds don't chew, but they do use their tongues to manipulate food in their mouths. Think of waders with their hugely long beaks - the tongue is vital for getting food back to the throat.

Tongues are certainly important to birds, primarily for foraging and food ingestion, not for voclaisations which are achived primarily by the syrinx bureid deep in the body cavity away from the mouth. There is much variation in tongue structures and these can be corrrelated with dietary type. For example their are brush like tongues in nectar feeders (e.g. stitch birds), sharp tongues with backward pointing spikes in fish eaters ( e.g. terns),  and fat muscular tongues in species which dehusk seeds in the mouth ( e.g. finches and parrots). Tongue length also varies , in long billed wading birds  which forage for buried prey which they detect using touch sensitivity at the bill tip ( e.g. woodcocks and godwits), the tongue is as long as the bill and is used to ratchet food back into the  mouth without having to bring the food item to the surface. Among ibises and spoonbills, which also detect food using touch sensitivity at the tip of their long bill, the tongue is very short and so prey taken held  in the bill tip has to be tossed back in the mouth; the tongue cannot be used to transport items into the throat.