In one paragraph
You attract birds to three habitats on your player mat. Each turn you take one action: play a bird, or activate a habitat row to gain food (forest), lay eggs (grassland) or draw bird cards (wetland). The more birds in a row, the stronger that action gets. After four rounds, the most points wins.
The basics
| Players | 1–5 |
|---|---|
| Play time | 40–70 min |
| Age | 10+ |
| Rounds | 4 |
| Turns per round | 8, 7, 6, 5 |
Setup
- Lay out the shared board. Put the bird tray next to the deck with three face-up birds, fill the birdfeeder with the five food dice, and place the goal board with one goal tile per round.
- Deal each player a starting hand. Everyone gets 5 bird cards, 2 bonus cards and 5 food tokens: one invertebrate, seed, fish, fruit and rodent.
- Choose what to keep. You can keep up to five things in total between birds and food. For every bird you keep, discard one food. Keeping three birds and two food is a common start.
- Keep one bonus card. Pick the one that best fits the birds you kept.
- Take your 8 action cubes. These are your turns for the first round.
Your turn: four actions
Place an action cube on one of the four options on your mat and do it. That's the whole turn.
| Action | Where | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Play a bird | Top of the mat | Pay the bird's food cost, plus any egg cost for the column, and place it in the leftmost empty space of a habitat it can live in. |
| Gain food | Forest row | Take food dice from the birdfeeder. More forest birds means more food. |
| Lay eggs | Grassland row | Place eggs on birds with space in their nest. More grassland birds means more eggs. |
| Draw cards | Wetland row | Take bird cards from the tray or the deck. More wetland birds means more cards. |
When you activate a row, move your cube from right to left across it and trigger each brown power ("when activated") on the way, if you want to. That chain is what makes a late-game turn so strong.
Egg costs by column
Playing a bird gets more expensive the further along the row it goes.
| Column | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Egg cost | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
Rounds and goals
At the end of each round, everyone compares their progress on that round's goal (for example, birds in the forest, or eggs in nests) and places a cube on the goal board to mark their score. That cube comes from your supply, which is why each round has one fewer turn than the last.
The goal board has two sides. The green side is the standard one: players are ranked on each goal, and 1st, 2nd and 3rd place earn fixed points. The blue side pays 1 point per matching item, up to 5, so there is less head-to-head competition. It's the better pick for a first game.
Final scoring
| Source | Points |
|---|---|
| Birds | The feather value printed on each bird you played |
| Bonus cards | As printed on each card |
| Round goals | Your marked score on the goal board |
| Eggs | 1 each |
| Food cached on birds | 1 each |
| Cards tucked under birds | 1 each |
Ties go to the player with more unused food tokens.
Common mistakes
- Activating powers left to right. Brown powers fire from right to left, starting with the bird nearest your cube.
- Forgetting the egg cost. Food is only part of the price once you're past the first column.
- Over-filling one habitat. A five-bird forest is great, but you still need eggs and cards to use it.
- Ignoring pink powers. Pink powers trigger on other players' turns, so check them when someone else acts.
Playing with two? Wingspan is one of the few bigger games that still works well with a pair. See our best 2-player board games for games built only for two.
Corin Ashdown is the pen name of the editor who writes and checks every guide on Vorbelutrioperbir. How we write and check guides.