Bird Game

Bird Game is a calm bird-watching and photography game. Explore four habitats, wait for real bird species to show up, frame them in your viewfinder and take the best photo you can before they fly off. Every good photo adds the bird to your field guide, and each photographed bird unlocks a nest-building puzzle. Play it free in your browser, with no download.

How to play

Choose a habitat to start an outing: Garden, Forest, Wetland or Coast. Each outing lasts 60 seconds and gives you 10 shots of film. Birds arrive one or two at a time and only stay a few seconds.

• Aim: move the viewfinder over a bird with the mouse, a finger drag or the arrow keys.
• Zoom: there are three zoom levels. Zoom in to make a small bird fill more of the frame, or zoom out to keep a big heron or swan from being cut off.
• Shoot: click, press Space, or lift your finger on a touch screen.

Each bird has its own habitat and behavior. Robins and sparrows hop across the lawn, blue tits hang upside down from a branch, woodpeckers climb and drum on trunks, owls peer out of tree hollows, ducks and coots swim, herons wade and strike, kingfishers, gannets, pelicans and terns plunge into the water, and sanderlings run along the surf line. Each species also gives a short call when it arrives. The calls are synthesized approximations, not recordings.

How photos are scored

Every photo is scored on three things, for a top score of around 100:

• Centering (up to 40): how close the bird is to the middle of your frame.
• Size (up to 30): how much of the frame the bird fills. A tiny bird in a wide frame scores low.
• Timing (up to 30): catch the bird mid-behavior (singing, pecking, drumming, diving and so on) for full marks. A settled bird earns 10, and a bird still flying in or out earns none.

If part of the bird is outside the frame, the photo loses points, and a bird whose center is outside the frame doesn’t count at all. A score of 25 or more earns at least one star and logs the species. 55 earns two stars and 80 earns three.

The field guide

The field guide holds 30 common birds, from the American robin and northern cardinal to the Atlantic puffin and Arctic tern. Each one you photograph unlocks a card with its scientific name and one or two short facts. Every fact comes from the English Wikipedia article on that species, and the card shows the exact article revision it was taken from. Your guide, best photos and best outing scores are saved in your browser.

Building nests

Once you’ve photographed a species with a known nest recipe, you can build its nest. Five birds have one: northern cardinal, American robin, Eurasian wren, black-capped chickadee and grey heron. Pick materials from a tray of six in the order the bird really builds. For example, the cardinal lays coarse twigs, then a leafy mat, then bark strips, then a lining of grasses, rootlets and pine needles. A material that belongs to a different layer counts as a wrong piece. After three wrong pieces the nest falls apart. Finish with no mistakes for three stars.

Tips

• Wait for the pose. Birds settle first and then do their thing. Holding your shot for the pose is worth 20 extra points.
• Match zoom to size. Use the closest zoom for wrens, tits and hummingbirds, and the widest for herons, swans and pelicans.
• Every species turns up. All the birds in a habitat take turns, so a full outing shows you every one of them.

FAQ

Is Bird Game free?

Yes. It’s free to play in any modern browser with no account and no install.

Is this like Flappy Bird?

No. There are no pipes and no tapping to stay in the air. This is a slower game about spotting, photographing and learning real birds. If you want the fast tap-to-fly challenge, play Flappy Bird.

Are the birds and facts real?

The 30 species are real, common birds, and every fact in the field guide comes from a cited Wikipedia revision. The art is our own simplified drawing and the calls are synthesized, so treat them as hints, not as identification guides.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Drag your finger to aim and lift it to take the photo. Use the Zoom buttons to change the frame size, and tap materials to build nests.

Can I pause?

Press P or Esc, or switch tabs. The outing timer stops until you resume.

Like games where you look closely? Try Spot the Difference next.