Bird kind (2023): To watch, to wait
By the time I was in fourth grade, I’d already decided my future career: an Ornithologist. Birds were my everything, but also the one animal entirely unattainable to me. My mom had a less-than-enjoyable experience with birds in her childhood, so it was the one pet we were forbidden from owning. This didn’t stop young me from collecting a stuffed owl from any store that had them. In the morning, I’d line them up at the end of my bed while keeping the newest addition at the head to cuddle with when bedtime arrived at the end of the day. So when Bird Kind (2023) showed up in my recommended apps on the Play Store, I was instantly drawn in.
I start this cozy game by clearing a patch of forest for a nest, before going to the “Summoning Tree” for an egg. In true mobile game tutorial fashion, it lets me skip through waiting for the egg to pip and allows me to move it right to the uncovered nest. The bald, bug-eyed baby bird sitting in its shell and wearing the top piece of it reminds me of all the times I’ve heard people talk about chicks being ugly. But something about the artstyle, and my own infatuation with birds, makes me fall further for the game.
With time, and evenly timed (but not quite accurate) drops of golden liquid named “food,” the “ugly” chick grows feathers and becomes this fuzzy, joyous white ball of feathers with a few streaks of green. One tap, and it becomes the first bird to grace my forest, a bee hummingbird. The tutorial teaches me that my grown bird eats gnats that are attracted to a flower, and that eating enough gnats levels them up so they produce more in-game currency, “melodia.”
I remember waiting around at the front window of our townhouse in the summer, watching for the quick fluttering of wings. One person in the family would mention the sight of a hummingbird and I would instantly be searching for it. I’d even learned how to make hummingbird food so we could attract them to our front yard. No red dye: I knew it was bad for them. They would rarely return after they left. But I would always wait, even for a small glimpse.
The game tutorial leaves me alone, allowing me to hatch more birds and expand my forest. The early birds of the game are mostly different hummingbirds, a little bee-eater, and a few pitta birds. Colors vary: greens, blues, reds, and yellows in different sizes of birds. With each bird comes a unique entry into the “field-guide,” with facts appearing as the birds level up, the Merlin Bird ID of this game.
Cardinals have always been common in Maryland. Anytime I saw a tuft of red in the trees, it would always be a male cardinal. But my eyes went towards the flashes of blue. Maybe it's just my favorite color, or maybe I’m drawn to the ephemerality of bluejays, stubborn birds who always seem to spite me. When I found that birds would come to our deck to eat from our newest feeder, I spent more time near the back of the house to watch them, to sneak pictures of them. Crows, house sparrows, my favorite nuthatches, chickadees, juncos, and of course, cardinals. But the bluejays would flee the second they sensed I opened my camera app. Even though I keep advocating for us to buy them their favorite, shelled peanuts, the blue jays and I have a rivalry. To their dismay, I have captured a few photos of their bright plumage.
Each patch cleared allows me to house two new birds. And each time I hatch new birds or merge duplicate birds to level them up further, I unlock new features. A fox deity at a shrine will give me feathers in exchange for spirits, so I can tune which aspects of a bird I want. This way, I can begin to complete my collection of birds without having to rely solely on chance.
Collecting has always been a habit of mine. I collected owl stuffed animals and Hello Kitty merchandise as a child, and I continue to collect these sorts of trinkets as an adult. Chance has also been a piece of it all, with blind bags and gacha games becoming a part of my life. My favorite gacha character turned physical collection of pins and acrylic standees, Sunday from Honkai: Star Rail, takes inspiration from crows and ravens, most notably with the multiple pairs of wings in his design and animations. He is represented as a crow with clipped wings even in another character’s splash art, a nod to his bird inspiration. When a baby crow fell out of a tree into our yard, I silently named it Sunday. My mom panicked, her compassion for animals clashing with her dislike of birds. As the resident bird-lover, I was tasked with picking the little guy up so we could bring him to a rescue. He couldn’t stay; our dogs might have eaten him and his parents might not look for him on the ground. This too has become a piece of my collection, a memory wedged between my love for birds and my love for Sunday.
The little bird sprites, producers of melodia, are one of my favorite parts of the game. They’re accurate to the real birds they’re based on, a game truly after the heart of birders. They have limited actions, but I’m in awe of them. They’ll hover, flapping their wings to stay in one spot. The hummingbirds’ wings get a sort of blur, making them all the more life-like. Then the birds might fly to perch on a different branch or by a nest. They’ll stand there and blink. Occasionally, they’ll dip their beaks into the feathers on their back, grooming themselves. Or they’ll get cozy and tuck their head to their chest for a short nap.
Watching birds has always been the closest I’ll get to owning one. I find that I prefer it, though maybe my mind would change if I actually had a pet bird. I get to know their little quirks, how they interact with their environment. Living in a new house—we moved from the townhouse not long ago—has drawn me to the behaviors of nuthatches. They’re small birds, and nimble. They never spend long at the feeder on the deck, but watching them on the tree closest to the deck is more informative. They do not perch on branches and fly between them. They scurry up and down the trunk of the tree, which makes them easy to spot. When they feed from our tall feeder, they cling to the wire upside down. Their behavior is so intriguing that I always wait and look out for them when I’m home.
As I get further into the game, it becomes a lot of waiting. Waiting for my bird to hatch, waiting until I can feed it again, waiting to be able to fledge the baby, waiting for gnats to be attracted. Wait, wait, and wait. Before, I would probably quit this sort of game early on into playing. What’s the point of playing a game where half the time you aren’t even actually playing the game? Yet there’s something about the anticipation of seeing which bird I’ll get next. Which bird I’ll get the privilege of seeing next.
Birding is all about waiting, watching for what birds will visit. Not long ago, I sat at the back window of our new house, leaning over the back of the couch to watch the yard. My family had moved the same week I moved to college for my first year. I was only there for the weekend, clumsily learning my way around a bigger space than the one I grew up in. The privacy fence encapsulated our acre of land, solely there to keep our dogs in when we let them outside to run, but the birds don’t mind. Fences don’t matter to them. I didn’t know what birds would show up at our meager little feeder. Would we see the same woodpeckers, the same hummingbirds, the same hawks? Would our yard become a smorgasbord of different birds, an array I’d never seen before? With two of my dogs curled on either side, I sat and waited.
