Michael giving himself a nipple piercing with a very sharp feather.
The board game
Accidental Innuendo: The "Anatomist" bonus card ("Birds with body parts in their names") draws attention to some unfortunate bird names like Azure Tit, American Woodcock, and Dickcissel. While the official ruling is that these don't count towards the card, it's a Popular Game Variant to say, "screw that, they count".
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Laying eggs is a quick and efficient way to gain more points since each egg is inherently worth one point. As a result, many players use strategies built around spamming the Lay Eggs action, or at least choose to spam the action in later rounds. This is common enough that expansions have tried to Nerf it and encourage alternative strategies.
Contested Sequel: The Oceania Expansion had somewhat of a mixed reception thanks to the addition of the wild Nectar resource: does it make the game more fun because you're less likely to end up in a clunky situation where you can't really do much, or does it make playing birds too easy?
The "Power Four": four birds whose activated abilities let you discard an egg to gain two of another resource type, which is a strong conversion rate. All of them can be placed in the Grasslands, the egg-producing habitat, which means that you can get away with de-emphasizing the other habitats in favour of just using the Lay Eggs action and getting other benefits from it too. They are notorious enough that the Board Game Arena implementation of the game has an option for removing them from the deck.
Chihuahuan Raven and Common Raven let you discard an egg to gain any two food from the supply, which is a good conversion rate and doesn't put you at the mercy of what happens to be available in the bird feeder at the moment. This also has the advantage of letting you ignore the Forest, which is typically the clunkiest and least powerful habitat. The Oceania Expansion made this ability even more powerful by introducing Nectar, a wild resource that can gain you points if you use it the most, and yes, the Ravens can gain it. Tellingly, the rulebook of that expansion outright suggests leaving out the Ravens if you think they're too powerful with that rule, and the official app allows you to remove them as well starting in the Oceania update. Additionally, the two birds are banned from online play.
Franklin's Gull and Killdeer let you discard an egg to draw two cards, which provides valuable card advantage that gives you access to more options. On top of that, these birds are cheap and require minimal setup before you can use their power.
Eastern Imperial Eagle and Bonelli's Eagle don't give you any resources, but make up for it with their absurd value. Their base value (7 or 8 points for three rodents) isn't that great, but their ability breaks them: instead of paying the food cost normally, you can spend a card to pay for each rodent and tuck the card(s) behind the bird. Each tucked card is worth a point. This means that you can get 10 or 11 points for no food as long as you have three cards you won't miss (which isn't hard to get). As if that weren't enough, they give even more points if paired with the Falconer or Rodentologist bonus cards, which are already very good.
High-Tier Scrappy: The members of the "Power Four", a quartet of Game-Breakers, are disliked for their extremely efficient resource conversion. This goes doubly for the Ravens, which also bless you with the ability to just take whatever food you want instead of relying on what happens to be available in the bird feeder. The Oceania Expansion makes them even better by letting them grab Nectar, which is wild and nets you a point bonus if you use a lot of it. As a result, many players either leave the Ravens out of the game (which the Ocenania Expansion's rulebook outright suggests) or add rules to nerf them (such as forbidding you from playing them in the first round). Additionally, the Board Game Arena implementation of the game offers an option to play without the Power Four, while the official app will let you remove the Chihuahuan Raven and Common Raven starting in the Oceania update.
Hype Backlash: The game is widely acclaimed for its mechanics and theme, but it's not uncommon for members of the board game community to play the game and end up feeling that these aspects are not that good — for instance, the egg costs have been singled out as illogical, and the game's balance has been criticized.
While a lot of the birds are situational and will end up as tuck or discard fodder in most games, some of them are notorious for being letdowns. Some of these can function as habitat fillers in a pinch, but their powers are definitely considered letdowns:
Blue Grosbeak is a bird that can migrate between habitats, which can give you a boost in the early game. Too bad about its awkward 3-food cost.
The "play sideways" birds are supposed to help kickstart your engine by covering two spaces in a habitat and powering up its effect faster. They generally suffer from this effect being underwhelmingnote especially with the Oceania boards, which makes covering the 1st spot more powerful, while the 2nd and 3rd spots usually don't do much for the habitat and not having good enough base rates to compensate, but the worst of them all is Common Blackbird. The power is at its most useful in the early game, which is awkward for a bird that costs 3 food to play, including two hard-to-come-by berries.note The starting nectar from the Oceania Expansion does make it possible to play the thing on turn 1, but then you run into the problem that going out of your way to cover the 2nd spot in a habitat is unimpressive on the Oceania boards.
The Horned Lark has the power "When another player plays a bird in their grassland, tuck 1 card from your hand behind this bird." Not only is this unlikely to get used much, but you still have to give up a card from your hand, and it doesn't do anything other than give you a single point per activation. Its only redeeming quality is its okay stats.
Korimako is an expensive 4-point bird with the extremely situational ability of turning your rodents into a nectar. Sure, it can give you the Literal Wildcard food type, but rodents are hard to come by in the first place.
The Loggerhead Shrike has the extremely situational pink power of "When another player takes the 'gain food' action, if they gain any number of rodents, cache 1 rodent from the supply on this bird." Not only are rodents a relatively rare kind of food, but even if the power does go off, it just gives you a Victory Point and doesn't help you ramp up your engine at all. It doesn't help that the bird costs 2 food for an unimpressive 3 points and 4 egg slots.
The gimmick of Montagu's Harrier is that you can play it for free by putting it on top of one of your existing birds, which becomes a tucked card. Unfortunately, this is underwhelming because playing Montagu's Harrier will rarely be worth more than a net 5 points. note The bird itself is worth 4 points, and the additional tucked cards is worth 1. This is not considering end-of-round goals and bonus cards; however, for these purposes replacing an existing bird can be awkward. Also, you lose whatever points the tucked bird would have provided Low-value birds are generally played for their powers, so you'll sabotage your engine if you play it before the endgame, and in the endgame you can probably do better than a 3~5-point play. Additionally, playing Montagu's Harrier requires you to discard all the eggs and cached food that were on the replaced bird, which further restricts potential targets.note Extra bad because Montagu's Harrier can only be played on a Grasslands bird... and a low-point Grasslands bird is probably good at laying eggs and probably has some eggs on it. And its restrictive cost of two rodents means that unlike fellow "play on top" predators Common Buzzard and Eurasian Hobby, it sucks even if you want to play it normally as habitat filler.
Red Wattlebird is an awkward Oceania bird that specifically costs two nectar to play, and its only power is to... refund a few nectar when played according to the number of small birds in your Forest. While a "free" play that adds to your spent Nectar doesn't sound bad, setting it up and gaining two nectar to play it can be awkward, and even then you still have to spend eggs and a turn to play a 3-point bird.
All of the "This bird counts double for end of round goals" birds suffer from being too situational — the power is worthless for every end-of-round goal the bird doesn't qualify for, every goal you were winning anyway, and every goal that doesn't specifically count birds. The latter being finicky doesn't help these birds' case either — in particular, the power makes them count double for "Birds with <nest type> and at least 1 egg" and "Birds with no eggs" goals, but doesn't double the bird's egg count for "Eggs in <nest type>" goals.
Some of the Bonus Cards are generally considered bad:
The "Data Analyst" Bonus Cards require you to sort birds according to their wingspans, which is very finicky and restrictive. The "Ranger" cards, which look at point values instead, and "Site Selection Expert", which asks for matching nests in the same column, have the same problem.
Citizen Scientist is a Bonus Card that requires you to have a bunch of birds with tucked cards — 4 birds for 3 points, and 7 birds for 6 points. Unless you have a mass tucker, even the lower requirement is awkward to reach, and even a dedicated tuck engine is unlikely to reach the higher goal without picking up a couple of random additional tucking birds.
Backyard Birder requires you to have a lot of low-scoring birds; while you usually want to pick up some of those early for their strong powers, you don't want this many of them because at some point their powers will stop paying off. Bird Feeder (birds that eat seeds) and Passerine Specialist (birds with low wingspans) have the same problem, as these properties correlate to low-scoring birds.
Visionary Leader requires you to end the game with a lot of cards left in your hand. While some tucking engines will generate a bunch of excess cards, in most games this Bonus Card isn't a great pick because you want to use your cards — not hoard them.
The official rule is that you draw five birds at the start of the game. However, many players think it's frustrating to get a bad opening hand that leads to a clunky early game, so they've come up with house rules to keep it from happening or at least make it less likely. Common options include drafting birds at the beginning of the game, drawing more than five birds, or offering some kind of mulligan.
It's common to nerf (or just remove) the Power 4, in particular the Ravens, as they're High Tier Scrappies.
Many dirty-minded players like to let birds like Azure Tit and American Woodcock count towards the Anatomist bonus card ("Birds with body parts in their names").
The Oceania Expansion introduces the popular "No Goal" end-of-round goal. It has the additional effect that you don't have to put an action cube on it, which means that you'll have more actions for the rest of the game. It's especially nice in round 1, as it gives you the most additional actions. Additionally, round 1 is when the end-of-round goal mechanic adds the least to the game because you get so little time to plan for it. This leads to house rules like always moving this "goal" to round 1 when it shows up, or simply using it for round 1 in every game.
Some people dislike how plentiful nectar is, and use a combination of Oceania food dice (nectar) and the base game's dice (no nectar) to make it rarer. This became an Ascended House Rule in the Asia expansion, though as a way to split one set of Oceania dice between two groups.
Many players wish the game were longer so that they'd have more time to play birds or run their engine. As a result, there are plenty of house rules that extend the game, such as by playing a 5th round.
That One Rule: Many players have been confused by the bird power "This bird counts double for end of round goals" from European Expansion, as it's pretty finicky about what goals it counts for. In particular, it counts for "Birds with <nest type> and at least 1 egg" and "Birds with no eggs", but not "Eggs in <nest type>". It can be summed up as "if the goal counts birds, it counts, otherwise it doesn't"... but even then you need to remember that it doesn't count towards "Bird cards in hand" because powers on cards in hand are not active.
