The birds have flocked together for their Season 23 return, this time with half of their roster intact and the other fitted with other Invite talent.

The -bird noises- that sat at 5th place and missed out on Season 22 playoffs parted ways with Voll, boomer, and train. During the off-season, they were replaced with Rolling, botmode, and Nursey on roamer, pocket, and medic, respectively.

Days before the start of Season 22, Nursey joined the ranks of the -bird noises- crew, albeit very briefly. Shortly after, she found herself on Invite team Ronin after internal issues left their medic slot open, which subsequently made way for train to make a return of his own. At the same time, Rolling played with Intermediate semi-finalists Paradise Cafe and botmode backed up for -bird noises-.

To give us some more insight behind the team’s pickups, we spoke to -bird noises- scout and team captain Vand:

This past season was a massive disappointment for all of us on the team, and especially for those that chose to stick around for this upcoming season in the hope that a revised roster would give us a chance to finally prove ourselves as a team. This team has been through a lot, from internal team issues due to players who may not have been really ready for invite in the first place to extremely frustrating struggles when it came to finding and maintaining an able-minded medic at the beginning of the past season.

Those are things that are all in the past though and stemmed from our invite beginnings in S21 alongside some misfortune that drove us off path this past S22. Our goal is the same as past seasons: to bring out the best of our line-up while really giving cemented top teams such as FROYO and EVL Gaming a good run for their money.

I am confident we can do this especially because of the pick-ups we have made for this season. Due to the demise of Luca Goers, we now have a skilled medic who will bring a wealth of knowledge to the team in Nursey and a beastly soldier who will truly fill the role of a pocket in botmode. We also picked up Rolling, an eager newcomer to invite who was a past teammate of botmode's and someone that I expect to take a lot away from this upcoming season while doing his best.

These pick-ups are key and give me a lot of confidence since, despite it being this team's third season in invite and after some very close runs for playoffs both past seasons, for the first time it feels as if all six players on the team will avoid being complacent and truly do what it takes to be top-notch invite players.

The new -bird noises- lineup ready for Season 23 is:

• Scout: corsa
• Scout: Vand
• Roamer: Rolling
• Pocket: botmode
• Demoman: sighguy
• Medic: Nursey