RuleSage cited table rulings
← Wingspan

You asked

What are the highest value bird cards

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Wingspanbg-266192-en-1e

I looked through Wingspan's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook · p.10
10 Powers on bird cards fall into 3 categories: WHEN ACTIVATED (brown): These powers may be activated from right to left whenever you use the corresponding habitat. BIRD POWERS This indicates that the bird’s power involves tucking other bird cards under it to represent the creation of a flock. Each
RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook · p.9
BirdCards_r20.indd 64BirdCards_r20.indd 64 6/15/21 7:24 AM6/15/21 7:24 AM Common Yellowthroat Geothlypis trichas This was one of the first American birds to be cataloged by Linnaeus, in 1766. 18cm 1 WHEN ACTIVATED: Draw 2 . If you do, discard 1 from your hand at the end of your turn. BirdCards_r20.i
RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook · p.9
9 OPTION 4. Draw Bird Cards and Activate Wetland Bird Powers The cards available for you to draw are the 3 face-up cards on the bird tray and the top card of the bird deck. When you choose to draw cards, do the following: 1. Place an action cube in the leftmost exposed slot in the “draw cards” row o
RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook · p.10 · Powers on bird cards fall into 3 categories: · ONCE BETWEEN TURNS (pink):
These powers may be activated from right to left whenever you use the corresponding habitat. WHEN ACTIVATED (brown): Cache: This refers to putting a food token on a bird (the bird is saving the food for later). You cannot spend that food token; instead, it's worth 1 VP at end of game. If you run out
RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook · p.10
+ BirdCards_r20.indd 104BirdCards_r20.indd 104 6/15/21 7:28 AM6/15/21 7:28 AM American White Pelican Pelecanus erythrorhynchos Pelicans work together to herd fish and then scoop them up. 274cm 5 WHEN ACTIVATED: Discard a to tuck 2 from the deck behind this bird. + BirdCards_r20.indd 10BirdCards_r20.

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
warm abstain
  • this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
corpus profile
live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 92 ms · ask 4715 ms · total 4809 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 4809 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 10, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "10 Powers on bird cards fall into 3 categories: WHEN ACTIVATED (brown): These powers may be activated from right to left whenever you use the corresponding habitat. BIRD POWERS This indicates that the bird’s power involves tucking other bird cards under it to represent the creation of a flock. Each ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "BirdCards_r20.indd 64BirdCards_r20.indd 64 6/15/21 7:24 AM6/15/21 7:24 AM Common Yellowthroat Geothlypis trichas This was one of the first American birds to be cataloged by Linnaeus, in 1766. 18cm 1 WHEN ACTIVATED: Draw 2 . If you do, discard 1 from your hand at the end of your turn. BirdCards_r20.i", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.031258, "snippet": "9 OPTION 4. Draw Bird Cards and Activate Wetland Bird Powers The cards available for you to draw are the 3 face-up cards on the bird tray and the top card of the bird deck. When you choose to draw cards, do the following: 1. Place an action cube in the leftmost exposed slot in the “draw cards” row o", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030777, "snippet": "These powers may be activated from right to left whenever you use the corresponding habitat. WHEN ACTIVATED (brown): Cache: This refers to putting a food token on a bird (the bird is saving the food for later). You cannot spend that food token; instead, it's worth 1 VP at end of game. If you run out", "headingPath": "Powers on bird cards fall into 3 categories: · ONCE BETWEEN TURNS (pink):", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.03009, "snippet": "+ BirdCards_r20.indd 104BirdCards_r20.indd 104 6/15/21 7:28 AM6/15/21 7:28 AM American White Pelican Pelecanus erythrorhynchos Pelicans work together to herd fish and then scoop them up. 274cm 5 WHEN ACTIVATED: Discard a to tuck 2 from the deck behind this bird. + BirdCards_r20.indd 10BirdCards_r20.", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029437, "snippet": "Place an action cube in the leftmost exposed slot in the 'draw cards' row on your player mat, and draw the number of cards shown there from either the face-up cards on the bird tray or the bird deck. There is no hand limit. If the slot where you placed your action cube shows an egg-to-card bonus con", "headingPath": "When you choose to draw cards, do the following: · Managing the bird deck", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.02901, "snippet": "85cm WS_EE_BirdSwiftStart_r4.indd 1WS_EE_BirdSwiftStart_r4.indd 1 6/9/21 4:19 PM6/9/21 4:19 PM WS_SwiftStartPlayerGuides_r9.indd 1WS_SwiftStartPlayerGuides_r9.indd 1 1/14/22 8:44 AM1/14/22 8:44 AM omnivore expert 2 per bird Birds that eat Any bird that specifically has a symbol as part of its food c", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.028595, "snippet": "3 This is a detailed rulebook, but you can learn the entire game by using the Swift-Start cards and guides. We recommend using these guides for your first game. TIP: When selecting bird cards, think about how they will help you get more cards or food early in the game. Brown powers can be especially", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 198 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 198 boosted
answered-before recall
no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
debug row retained until
Nov 15, 2026 18:33

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) p.10 0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) p.9 0.032002 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#3 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) p.9 0.031258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) Powers on bird cards fall into 3 categories: · ONCE BETWEEN TURNS (pink): p.10 0.030777 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#5 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) p.10 0.03009 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#6 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) When you choose to draw cards, do the following: · Managing the bird deck p.9 0.029437 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#7 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) p.1 0.02901 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#8 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) p.3 0.028595 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 80 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 OFFICIAL Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bird Cards) (corpus doc 65) Swainson's Hawk p.9 #34 0.010638 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#2 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Appendix (corpus doc 46) Card-Drawing Powers p.10 #9 0.016129 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#3 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) Powers on bird cards fall into 3 categories: · ONCE BETWEEN TURNS (pink): p.10 #4 0.030777 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#4 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Appendix (corpus doc 46) Food from the supply p.7 #10 0.015625 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#5 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Appendix (corpus doc 46) End Game Scoring p.2 #22 0.012195 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#6 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) p.9 #3 0.031258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#7 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) p.9 #2 0.032002 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#8 RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198) p.10 #1 0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
timing split
retrieval 92 ms · first delta 4713 ms · total 4809 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 0 ms · retrieval 92 ms · ask 4715 ms · gateway work 4809 ms · total 4809 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3107
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
9
tok/sec
195.7 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.046 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 55s ago)
stream path
streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog
first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture
both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.
outcome
ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale
I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

6 errata cards registered for edition 3 — these are what the gate above had to match against

  • anatomist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.2
  • belted kingfisher · HAND_PINNED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bird Cards) · corpus doc 65 · p.17
  • ecologist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.5
  • oologist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.1
  • photographer · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.3
  • rodentologist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.4

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.