Bin Chicken Blitz: Day 2 of Sunburnt Santa

How to play Bin Chicken Blitz

• Drag back anywhere, aim, then let go. Puddings never run out.
• Birds keep landing for 60 seconds. Skittish ones flap, then bolt. Fly-pasts never land but are worth the most.
• Hit in a row for a combo. Hit two at once, or one in mid-air, for a bonus.

Scoring

A skittish bird is worth 1.5x and a fly-past 2x; any bird hit off its perch scores another 1.5x, and a second bird with the same pudding 1.5x more. Hits in a row multiply it all: x2 from 3 in a row, up to x5 from 12. A pudding that hits nothing, or a bird that flies off untouched, resets the combo.

Stars: the three targets

Stars don't lock anything; they show how you're going, and doors with at least one star count towards the bonus games.

Tips for three stars

1. The combo is the score. A pudding that hits nothing resets it to zero, so don't spray shots: wait the split second for a clean line. At x5 even a plain bin chicken is worth 500.
2. Birds that sit too long fly off on their own, and that breaks your combo too. Clear the quick-leaving lorikeets and cockies first; a settled ibis sits for ten seconds or more.
3. A bird you hit while it is flying counts as mid-air, and fly-pasts count double on top. A lorikeet fly-past at x5 is 7,500 points, and the rare birds turn up more often in the last 10 seconds.

The real story: why Australians call the ibis a bin chicken

The Australian white ibis is a native wetland bird, 69 to 76 centimetres long, with a bare black head and a long curved bill made for digging crayfish and mussels out of mud [1]. Some populations have learnt to live on human food in cities, and the museum lists "Bin Chicken" among its common names [1]. Oddly, it is becoming more common in some areas while its numbers fall in its natural range [1].

City ibis are not only bin raiders. A study by the University of Wollongong, the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Australian Museum found that in dry weather Sydney's Belmore Park, full of bins and lunch crowds, held about ten times more ibis than other parks [2]. After rain, Belmore's numbers fell while some other parks gained birds, and the ibis ate earthworms four times more often in wet weather than in dry [2]. The Domain, it turned out, had six times as many worms as Belmore [2]. Given the chance, the bin chicken still goes back to a wetland bird's dinner.

That is the bird you'll see eyeing off your Christmas picnic in December. In the game the puddings only daze them: every bird bounces, shakes it off and flies away.

Read more: Bin chickens: why Australians call the ibis a bin chicken.

When it opens

Door 2 opens on day 2 of your own calendar (your Day 1 is the day you first play), and for everyone by 2 December. Play the door before it to open it. Once it's open you can replay it as often as you like, and after Christmas Eve all 24 doors stay open. How the calendar works.

Play now

Same kind of game: Seagull Showdown, Cocky Chaos, Snag Toss.

Sources for the real story

1. Australian White Ibis, Australian Museum
2. How the urban bird gets the worm, Australian Museum