The Bird

It’s been requested of me to write a tutorial on the trick commonly known as a “Bird”. I planned for this article to be made a little bit later, but having it be requested and realizing how similar the trick is to the last article (on the Lighthouse), it felt only natural.

This trick consists of pulling the tama up and balancing it in the space between the big cup (or small cup for a variation) and the spike. Once again, check the JKA tables, they have very useful .gif animations that demonstrate tricks very well. In any case, the end result should look like this:

A Bird is a fairly advanced trick that has a habit of being very deceptive; it looks a lot easier than it is, and people often have a tendency to attempt it when it’s really just a bit of a reach for their skill level. I try not to make the order of my tutorials misleading, so unsurprisingly, a good measure of whether or not you should dedicate time to this trick is the ease of Lighthouses. If you can make a lighthouse 1 out of 10, you are in the clear and this trick shouldn’t give you too much trouble, but if a Lighthouse is a new and rare occurrence, practice those a bit more before shooting for the Bird.

That being said, there really isn’t too much behind this trick. It holds many similarities to the lighthouse (in case you haven’t noticed) and even though it might seem like it’s not even in the same genre, in truth, this is another balance trick, which are all related. So even though it holds very little aesthetic resemblance to the Lighthouse, many of the aspects key to landing a lighthouse are apparent here as well; apply them.

There is a tradeoff between two properties of the lighthouse and bird: The bird is simply a lighthouse that requires MORE accuracy, but LESS balance.

The lighthouse was primarily dependent on how well you could balance the ken after it “landed”, meaning when the tama and the ken first make contact. A good player can save a lighthouse with a bad landing just by chasing the ken around and getting it under control; pure balance. A bird is slightly different, a bad initial landing means that this attempt is over; there is VERY little lenience for “saving” a badly tossed Bird. However, with a good landing, it takes much less balance to keep the tama where it’s at. You won’t have to “chase” the tama around much at all.

With this emphasis on accuracy in mind, the first thing you need to do is, using your ken grip (by far the easiest grip for this trick), PLACE the tama in the final “bird” position and just hold it there. This will give you a feel for the general position you need to hold the ken and most importantly, what angle the ken needs to be held at. This is key because up to this point, in the ken grip you are very used to either landing the tama on the cup or the spike, not between them at this 45 degree angle. You’ll have to betray your muscle memory and, at first, constantly be aware that you cannot point the spike or big cup straight up like your body wants to. This can actually be the hardest part of the bird, it being such an unfamiliar movement in an all too familiar situation.

Constantly aware of this, your initial movements are identical to the “Pull up in”, or simple pulling the dead tama right up onto the spike. Just like the pull up in, you need to pull the tama upwards in a manner that keeps the hole facing downwards. For this trick, it is sometimes helpful to, as you pull up, move your hand outward away from your body a TINY bit so the hole on the tama will rotate ever so slightly towards you. This is key because, in case you cannot tell from the picture above, the hole of the tama needs to rest on the lip of the cup. This will provide most of your stability due to the high friction between the edge of the cup body and the edge of the tama hole. PERFECT positioning of the tama hole (tilted maybe 30 degrees towards you) prior to catching is not exactly necessary, as it tends to behave like a cup: if you are in the ballpark, the tama hole and the cup body WANT to settle into each other.

When thrown properly, all it takes is a nice soft landing; treat it like any cup, but MUCH softer (imagine landing a cup without making a sharp noise, just a light, muted clack, thats about how soft you want to your landing to be). Once again, it’s VERY helpful to not pull the tama any higher than it needs to be.

The last element of this trick is making sure that as the tama lands, the spike is positioned exactly in line with a diameter of the tama. Meaning that if the spike is off line with the cup/hole contact point in relation to the tama, the tama will simply slide off either side of the spike. This makes sense and should be very apparent when you first placed the tama in the Bird position

Note the ever important line of symmetry. how it divides the ball into two exactly equal half's. THAT is what makes the balance of the spike contact point possible.

This trick is all about making sure you have the combination of proper placement of the two contact points (1. the cup edge and tama hole, and 2. The side of the spike and surface of the tama), the alignment of these two points, and, like always, a soft landing. After that, all it’s about is having a steady enough hand to keep it there.

Good luck!

-Brian