Maa-kun may wear glasses but the man is still completely blind. This girl didn't give a crap about him for years and he chased her like a phantom on a mountain of assumptions smh
Something tells me that Fern will have captured her bird just by putting down a little seed trap or something.
Basically every mage will be overthinking the exam with their magic skills only to overlook a basic real-life solution.
They said in a past chapter that killing someone disqualified a mage from passing, so it wouldn't surprise me if that rule applies here. You can steal, capture, trap, etc. but killing is probably off the table if you want to pass.