What do you do against the bird opening?

By the way, this is an actual opening, not a fool's mate joke.

Possibly helpful:
Beating Unusual Openings by Richard Palliser (2006)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627072813/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen107.pdf
Grandmaster Repertoire 19 - Beating Minor Openings by Victor Mikhalevski
http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/BeatingMinorOpenings-excerpt.pdf
http://www.davidsmerdon.com/?p=1888

The way I see it, it's largely just a mirror image of the English Opening (1. c4). In the English Opening, Black has two main philosophies: (1) Try to win with a center duo discouraging move; (2) Try to draw by copying moves. The same is true in the Bird's Opening:

I only offered a logical starting point of how to make a decision on how to respond since the OP sounded completely baffled by 1. f4. Bird's Opening isn't some totally different animal that requires revising all your opening knowledge, and neither is 1. g4 or 1. h4, etc. There's an analogy with music here: In chord progressions there exist only three basic chord functions: I, IV, and V7. Armed with that bit of knowledge you can create chord substitutions and interesting scales galore. In chess there exist only two basic openings: 1. e4 and 1. d4. Anything else either transposes into one of those, is a mirror image of one of those, is an inverted version of one of those, or has the characteristics of one of those.

P.S.--According to MCO, Bird's Opening is largely a *system* (like the Colle System, London System, A.R.B. System, etc.), where the pawns and pieces tend to take the same positions, regardless of what the opponent does. The position you showed illustrates the typical placements for that system. That is another introductory approach to describing Bird's Opening, but just one approach.

Didn't Magnus give Kramnik the Bird earlier this year?   

 Against the Bird Opening you might try From`s Gambit with 1...e5 followed by 2 fxe5, d6. If you like real tactical complicated play, give it a try.

The Cat Defense leaves just a pile of feathers.  Here's a game (hope link works) from 2006 in which White brought a prepared variation to the table, sacked his queen and beat a player who had 345 rating points on him, Mackenzie-Pruess http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1648780

Personally, just off the top of my head. This could be a common variation for beginners.

Jeez, you sure like to argue, don't you? We're trying to help a beginner with basic concepts and you keep throwing out specifics in what I take to be a very general question. All you're arguing about, at the foundation, is about the level of generalization that the OP wanted, and none of us know that, so what's up with all your arguments in all your threads?

P.S.--There exists at least a third general philosophy for most openings: noncommittal, which usually means Black starts with ...Nf6. You can play that against 1. c4, 1. d4, even 1. e4, and 1. f4. 

I prefer to play KID structures against 1.f4.  

For fun, 12-years old Kasparov crushing a grown up rising star GM who played him the Bird in a simul, the only opening plan being to push e5:

The White king led all the way to h8 to be checkmated is priceless.

Also, the Sicilian is sometimes played 1...c5 and 1...c5 2...d5 3...Nf6 is a setup that in Andy Soltis's old book on Bird's Opening is treated as a main line.

Try www.365chess.com Opening Explorer.

From Gambit against the Bird is nice defense to make White cautious about his opening choice.

Haven't you heard?? Don't tell me you haven't heard!

A well a everybody's heard about the Bird! B-B-B-Bird Bird, Bird is the Word, B-B-B-Bird Bird Bird, Bird is the Word.... Don't you know about the Bird? A well a everybody's talkin' about the Bird!

1...e5 (From's gambit) is fine, as long as you understand what you are aiming at, and don't mind playing the King's Gambit as Black.

This forum is so bird-ing.

Ha Ha.

I resign.....