Toucan play at that game — and toucan win.

Two pairs of sophomores swept the top spots in the 51st Bird Calling Contest on Tuesday. Maya Guzdar and Kay Sibal received first for their portrayal of the willow ptarmigan, with Anna Campbell and Ko Narter in second for the northern pintail. In third came a trio of seniors, Drew Collins, Katie St. Claire and Laine Ratzer, who played snowy egrets.

“The competition was fierce,” said junior Char Conway, who was in the audience that night. “I didn’t expect people to actually sound like birds when they did the calls.”

These calls have historically been featured on shows like Late Night with David Letterman, but after the host retired last year, plans for alternative TV appearances are still up in the air. After the recording of this year’s contest performance finishes downloading, it could be sent to other talk shows, producer Shannon Overturf said.

“It doesn’t matter!” Sibal said.

The performance and the preparation for the contest alone is worth it, Guzdar said. Indeed, it was all smiles among the winners of the contest after the results were announced by superintendent Randall Booker.

“We are feeling like bird brains right now,” Guzdar said seconds after the two received their silver trophy and multicolored bouquets of flowers, as Sibal beamed by her side. “We were not expecting any of this at all.”

Senior Allie Frankel, who has attended the contest all four years, thought this year’s contest was unique.

“It was really nice that so many people still wanted to do it even though there was no promise of going on a show,” Frankel said. “People are still enthusiastic about it.”

Guzdar played an ambitious mother willow ptarmigan with hopes that her child, played by Sibal, would place gold at the 2016 Winter Olympics for ski jumping. That is, until they discovered that this year’s Olympics are actually happening in the summer and in Brazil. Their skit concluded after both grew to embrace Sibal’s true passion for singing.

The two both said they loved the high-energy experience of performing with each other.

“It’s like hanging out with a friend,” Guzdar said.

Part of Guzdar and Sibal’s surprise at their success stemmed from the fact that they had only participated in the contest once before. Plus, Sibal and Guzdar are only underclassmen, a population not usually represented in the winners.

“We’re doing bird calling, it’s hard to tell how good you are,” Guzdar said. “We just did this to have fun and have a good bonding experience and do something weird.”

Astonishment ran through the minds of St. Claire, Ratzer and Collins as well. The senior triad wrote their skit Sunday night, Collins said. Rehearsal backstage even extended until minutes before they took the stage, St. Claire said.

“We were kind of the last group to give Shannon everything for our bird,” St. Claire said. “We didn’t really know what we wanted the story to be and it just kind of formed itself as we went.”

Sibal and Guzdar also created their skit in around three days, just before the contest on Tuesday. After running through the skit at dress rehearsal on Monday, they realized it was too long and cut around half of it, Guzdar said. They spoke over FaceTime the night before the contest and ran through the final version the morning of.

The weekend before the contest was also a critical time for Campbell and Narter.

“This is our first year, we were really lost and we didn’t really know what to do,” Narter said. “Maya and Kay, who won this year, did it last year so they helped us out.”

The performances of these winners came together in a matter of days, but preparations for the contest behind the scenes have been under way since December, Overturf said. A newcomer to the role of producer, Overturf took the offer to sustain the Piedmont tradition, she said.

“I didn’t want to let the show die,” Overturf said.

Death seems anything but imminent for this contest; in fact, parts of Piedmont’s past have been revived through skits like that of Campbell and Narter.

Campbell felt especially proud of her skit’s references to this year’s PHS production of Sound of Music, in which she played Liesl, the eldest Von Trapp daughter. For example, they sang a parody of “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” and instead of singing “I’ll take care of you,” the ducks Narter and Campbell were portraying sang, “I will mate with you,” Campbell said.  

St. Claire especially enjoyed how her group sprinkled puns throughout their skit, which revolved around the characters of Ratzer and St. Claire vying for the love of Collins’s character. Their costumes — white T-shirts stuffed with pillows and black bottoms, evocative of the snowy voluminous plumage that gives the egret its name — were especially memorable for Ratzer and Collins.

“I was ready to have fun,” Collins said.

Two of the judges were PHS community members: athletic trainer Tim Harkins and Wellness Center director Ting Hsu Engelman. The other judge, Scott Terrill, is an ornithologist and a PHS alumnus who knew Leonard J. Waxdeck, the PHS teacher for whom the competition is named.

Senior Elie Docter and junior Cade Becker hosted the evening as Masters of Ceremony. Becker modeled a chicken costume, Docter had ample opportunity to roast Becker, and both were guilty of dropping more bird puns than anyone could have called — or bird called — for.