Name: Blewbird Debut: Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Blewbird is weird. I mean, no duh, it's being featured on "Weird Mario Enemies," even if our blog title gets less and less fitting by the day, but I mean weirder than you'd realize by just looking at it at a glance. If you just take a quick glance at it, you might not think much of it -- just a stylized cartoon bluebird, reminiscent of The Artist Formerly Known As Twitter.
But then you look at it more closely, notice things like its black shell and brown shoes. How weirdly smooth its skin is, without even the suggestion of feathers. The fact it doesn't have wings at all. The fact these things burrow out of the ground.
Oh, and let's not forget the fact they shoot off their own beaks!
Yeah, let's not ignore the main hook of the enemy here! Blewbirds predominantly appear in the level Blewbird Roost, where they'll stand against walls and shoot out their beaks at Mario and Friends. Of course, usually their beaks end up sticking to walls across from them...
And unfurling into platforms! That's right! Blewbirds are an animal that evolved to create Platforming Challenges! Is this how they traverse all the open air in the caves they live in without wings? It's not like they can burrow everywhere!
So whatever Blewbirds are, I'm pretty sure they're not birds. Blewbirds are birds in the sense that jellyfish are fish. (A comparison I'm pretty sure I've made multiple times on the blog at this point.) But if they aren't birds, then what are they? Well, let's take another look at Blewbird without its beak...
Does it remind you of anything...?
Because it reminds me of Birdo, another character who's named after a bird for no particularly good reason whatsoever! Almost like it's all connected... But I mean, the similarities are hard to ignore -- the tube mouth optimized for shooting projectiles, the white underbelly, the weirdly smooth skin, heck, you could probably make the very bold argument that Blewbird's ponytail and Birdo's bow are connected somehow.
But wait! I'm not ending things right there, because Blewbird doesn't only have similarities to Birdo...
You see, Nintendo has connected the Birdos and Yoshis for a while now, as Mario's main Weird Dinosaur Characters, but there hasn't been an awful lot actually connecting them in-universe... until now?! For you see, I'm making the radical claim that Blewbirds are proof of a missing link species that connects the Yoshis and Birdos! Look at it! The tube mouth of Birdo. The shell and shoes of Yoshi. It's all so clear now!
Blewbirds aren't birds! They're some sort of weird dinosaur! Just like... just like... just like real birds. Hmm.
Maybe I need to rethink the point I was making with this post. Taxonomy is weird, guys.
