Thank you for the advice - It's like as soon as someone points out what is wrong it's like a lightbulb moment where you realize where you have gone wrong.
Adding the collision 2d event to both ended up with me flapping once then the bird would not enter the finished state and would not allow me to flap again.
Adding it to the idle state however triggered what I needed.
Now onto animations, sounds, GUI and scoring. Not much left haha
My previous question has been answered - Here is my new question:
Best way to spawn moving backgrounds and can you put a trigger when player reaches set score / distance?