Potentially transitioning to the bird

Hi! I have played chess on and off for years and have lately struggled to find the motivation to continue trying to improve, and honestly, even playing rated for about a year. I am hoping this can motivate me like the Caro Kann motivated Levy at the end of his rating plateau.

I am around 2000 elo and have always played 1. e4. But e4 players seem to have it harder in prep (my respect to them) and memorizing how to play against every variation of the Sicilian hasn’t been very appealing to me lately.

1. d4 is too boring, 1. c4 is fine I guess, but 1. f4 is what I am really considering. From what I have seen online the bird is an aggressive opening which is perfect because I am a very aggressive player.

But what I also saw is that this opening is almost never played at the top level and is on the border for being considered dubious. Why is that? I don’t want to transition to an unsound opening that I will have to change later.

So, is the bird a playable opening at the 2000+ level and worth the transition to? And why is it never played at the top level?

Thank you.

1. f4 is called the bird opening.

oh no the dragon is devolving into a bird

I would play the Sicilian dragon but literally eveyone plays it and the accelerated. 😭

But what if I played both? 👀

perilthedragon becoming perilthebird???

There used to be a bit of chess software called Chessmaster, went through various iterations. I think I had 2000 or 3000. They all had a guy with a bushy beard on the CD case. One of the best features was an enormous number of computer-characters you could play, some of which were a bit frivolous. One of my favourite was a pirate's parrot, who always played bird's opening (for obvious reasons)

The only proper and civilized response to the bird, is not the single-parrot salute, but rather, e5.

The Bird is sound enough, the main line gives Black fairly easy equality in my opinion. Some players like the resulting positions some don't.