I got the hang of this puzzle pretty quickly, modifying our insights as we went, and breezed through it in about 24 minutes.  I think Jonathan was helping, but I must have had all the ahas, because he doesn’t appear in the log. Or maybe I ignored him.

Our brief log is after the cut, and the puzzle is available here.

Log:

0:00:00

Opening puzzle

0:01:51

Huh.  [That’s our “stumped” sound”]

0:01:53

Birds don’t appear to be exactly in rows…

0:02:14

The bird with red eye in the top row doesn’t have red eye lower down

0:03:39

The all-white bird has an altered version near the bottom, with feet.  [Actually, Jonathan may have found this one. He definitely found some.]

0:06:19

Each bird has two misfits… red eyes, white head, extra feet, missing feet.  [Getting close to right]

0:07:45

Changes are in heads or feet… suggests altering their names?

0:09:38

Bird with red eyes also has feet, non-yellow beak, at various times.

0:12:05

That’s 3 pairs for that bird. Let’s see if the others have multiples

0:15:11

Lowest white bird is missing orange bit, like bird above right. so bottom white bird is in two pairs  [Silent 6.5 minutes of noticing pairs, which is boring to log.]

0:21:42

Definitely making letter shapes, M near the top, A near the bottom

0:22:31

Looks like an R last, and and I (or incomplete letter) between A and R.

0:23:25

probably MIDAIR

0:23:43

CORRECT!