Birdcage Press (a review)

My girls and I have had fun with this review for a company called Birdcage Press. Birdcage Press has a collection of great products to choose from. I chose to try out the Card Game and Book Set called Wild Cards: Backyard Birds.

I was pleasantly surprised at how large these colorful the cards are: perfect for little hands! Children can play any standard card game, such as Memory or Go Fish, while learning about birds. The cards display 6 different categories of birds:

1. Tricksters
2. Songbirds
3. Woodpeckers
4. Hummers
5. Little Chirpers
6. Waterbirds

Within these categories, there are 3 different sets of that type of bird. For instance, the hummingbird category contains 2 Rufous Hummingbird cards, 2 Anna's Hummingbird cards, and 2 Ruby-throated Hummingbird cards. I confess, I never thought about birds much before and didn't realize there were so many different kinds of hummingbirds or woodpeckers.

Each card displays a beautiful picture of each bird, it's name, and a brief description of the bird. The Anna's Humming bird trivia says, "A female hummingbird raises her chicks on her own. She builds a tiny, cup-shaped nest and binds it together with sticky spider silk that she gathers." Also listed at the bottom of the card are the names of the other 2 types in the card category.

My girls LOVED playing "Go Fish" with this set. I loved hearing them Ooh and Aah over the different birds, and giggling with each other. I especially loved hearing them greet their Daddy at the end of the day with "Guess what! There's a bird whose chirp sounds like it's saying "po-ta-to chip"!

Old Maid is another easy one to play with this set. Just remove one of the matches to the Magpie bird so that the one Magpie card left is the "Old Maid". Of course, any card would work, but those Trickster Magpies just seem to fit the bill the best.

Also included with the card game set is a book about Backyard Birds, written by Kathleen Yale. This 31-page booklet isn't much larger than the cards, but contains some great info! It contains a page for each bird in the deck of cards and tells about each bird's habitat, food, nesting habits, and behaviour. A map shows which regions each bird is found in. Each page contains a paragraph describing the bird's behaviour, the sound they make, and interesting trivia.

The black-billed Magpie makes a sound like "wock, wock, wock-a-wock, wock." I think it's hilarious that a bird could sound like Fozzie Bear. Unfortunately, I'll probably never meet a Magpie since it lives far west of me.

Wild Cards: Backyard Birds is intended for ages 6+ and can be purchased for $10.95 through  Birdcage Press.  It would make a great gift for the bird-lover in your family.

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