How to Read a Wingspan Bird Card

A Wingspan bird card holds a lot of small print. New players stare at it and see a painting with icons scattered around the edge. Experienced players glance at it for two seconds and know whether they want it. The difference is not memory. It is reading the card in the same order every time.

This lesson is the last piece of Level 0. It walks around a bird card corner by corner, using the base game’s 170 birds as the examples, not counting the 10 Swift-Start birds in current printings. Counts in this lesson come from our tally of the base deck, checked against the community card database at Wingsearch, which Stonemaier links from its rules page.

Top left: what it costs

The food cost sits in the top left corner.

• Several icons mean you pay all of them. Two invertebrates and a seed is three food.
• A slash between icons means you pay one or the other.
• The wild icon means any food at all.
• A crossed-out circle means the bird costs no food. Only 3 base-game birds are free.

Most birds cost 1 to 3 food. That cost is only half the price, though. The other half is the egg cost of the column you place it in, which is printed on your mat, not on the card. The how to play lesson covers that: column 1 free, columns 2 and 3 one egg, columns 4 and 5 two eggs.

Beside the cost: where it lives

The habitat icons show which rows the bird can live in: forest, grassland, wetland, or a mix. In the base game, 116 of the 170 birds live in just one habitat. The other 54 give you a choice, and 27 of those can go anywhere.

A bird that fits two or three rows is flexible. You can place it in the row you want to grow, or the row the round goal counts.

Left edge: points, nest, and eggs

Down the left side you find three numbers and a shape.

Points. The feather shows what the bird scores at the end of the game. Base birds run from 0 to 9, and the average is about 4.

Nest. Below the points is the nest type: bowl, cavity, ground, or platform. A star nest is wild and counts as every type. Nest types matter for many round goals and several bonus cards, so they are worth noticing even though they never cost anything. Two base birds, the cowbirds, have no nest at all; like the real birds, they lay their eggs in other birds’ nests.

Egg limit. The egg icons show how many eggs the bird can hold. This is not a cost. It is storage. Most base birds hold 2 to 4 eggs, a few hold 5 or 6, and a few hold 1 or none. Since every egg is a point at the end, a bird with a big egg limit is worth more than its feather says.

The wingspan

The bird’s real wingspan, in centimeters, is printed on the card. Base birds range from a 10 cm hummingbird to a 277 cm condor. It does nothing on its own. It matters when a power or bonus card compares sizes, such as a hawk that hunts birds under 75 cm, or a bonus card for small or large birds.

The power: the color tells you when

The text box along the bottom is the bird’s power. Read its color before you read its words, because the color tells you when it happens.

• Brown, “when activated.” Fires each time you use this bird’s row. In the base game, 116 of the 170 birds are brown. These are your engine.
• White, “when played.” Fires once, right when you play the bird. 36 base birds.
• Pink, “once between turns.” Fires on another player’s turn, at most once between your own turns. Only 12 base birds.

Six base birds have no power at all. They tend to score well on points instead.

Two small icons can appear in the power box. A predator icon marks a bird that hunts: it rolls dice or checks a card from the deck, and on a success it caches food or tucks a card. A flocking icon marks a bird that tucks cards behind itself to build a flock. Some bonus cards count these icons, and Level 2 shows why these birds score so well.

A four-question habit

When a new bird lands in your hand or on the tray, ask:

1. Can I afford it soon? Food on the card, eggs from the column.
2. Where would it go? Which row, and does that help this round’s goal?
3. What does it score? Points, plus eggs it could hold.
4. What does it do, and when? Brown, white, or pink.

That order matches how you will use the card. Cost and habitat decide whether you can play it. Points and eggs decide its floor. The power decides its ceiling.

What is not on the card

Two things that affect a bird’s value live elsewhere. Its egg cost depends on the column. And its bonus card value depends on the bonus card you hold, which may care about its name, its food, its nest, or its size. The appendix explains every bird power and bonus card if a wording ever puzzles you.

You can now play, teach, and read the cards. That is Level 0 done. For a broader look at games where the cards in front of you become the machine, see our explainer on tableau games.