Flock Together! Seven Happy Players Spot Hawks, Pigeons

Way back in ye olden days, I backed a little game called Birds of a Feather: Western North America. Ye olden days were last year, for the record, and I was neck deep in bird watching, a hobby I picked up during the pandemic as a way to not go crazy being stuck indoors and away from everyone I knew.

It wasn’t out of the blue, though. I’ve been interested in birds for a while, always willing to watch a crow do crow things or point out a hawk sitting on a power line. But I didn’t know anything about the sheer variety of life that waited outside my door until I got into Wingspan. Hoowee. That game is good, and the information about birds that you can learn is both fascinating and daunting. But I soaked it up.

I started using the Seek app on my phone to identify plants as a sort of game while on newly instituted Covid nature hikes. It taught me to look around me and truly see what I’ve been ignoring my whole life: everything. Including birds.

Anyway, this isn’t a recipe blog, so I can’t go on forever and expect you to stay around. Cut to the chase.

Birds of a Feather: Western North America is a card game that plays from one to seven people. I’ve played it at one, and I’ve played it at seven. The solo mode is available on the app, and it’s a good puzzle. It’s way easier to get sets of cards than in a seven person game. But I’d probably better tell you how it plays before I start getting into it, huh?

So, you deal out an even number of cards, setting the leftovers aside, based on the number of players. Each turn everyone plays a bird card in front of them face down. These cards have one of five colors, which corresponds to their habitat, and one of seven symbols which denote its rarity, sort of.

When everyone has played a card, you all simultaneously flip them over and cross off spots on your score sheet that correspond to your own card and any card that was played that matches the color (habitat) you played. This could mean you have a banger of a bird watching session or you only see the one li’l old bird you set out to see.

Then every card played goes to the middle of the table, as those birds are hanging around for another round. The next round everyone plays a card as before, marks the similarities played, and then gets to mark off any bird that lingered in the matching habitat from the last round that’s in the center of the table. Then all the lingering birds fly off, and the round’s played cards take their place. Rinse and repeat.

So you continue til all the cards have been played but your last card, which gets discarded without playing it. Then, you score based on the number of points (stars) under all the birds you have crossed off. If you get all birds of a given habitat, you get a bonus. This isn’t impossible to do, but it’s not easy either. And if you can get two rows full, you’re probably in the running for the lead.

There are some other rules to this one, like predators scaring off matching lingering birds, but it’s nothing too complicated or surprising.

We had seven players at game night, and I almost put this one aside because I never dreamed it could accommodate everyone. Imagine my delight when I saw that it played SEVEN! It was easy to teach to everyone, even people who don’t play many games and don’t love to learn rules, and there was a unanimous vote to play it again immediately after we finished the first game.

I’ll definitely be getting this out again, and I can’t wait to see how it plays at other play counts. All-in-all, Birds of a Feather: Western North America was a big success, and I’m glad I backed it. I imagine it will be out in retail stores in the not too distant future. And it will likely be hella affordable, too, since it’s just a deck of cards and a paper score pad (which is the only thing in the box that feels cheap, but the app serves as a nice score pad if everyone has it). If you see it, grab a copy. You’ll be singing like a happy lark—at least until someone plays a hawk and scares away the double-wing icon bird you’ve been waiting for all game.

As always, I appreciate your eyeballs!
~Justin