To further up on St. Pauli's point, if there is only a 50ish chance of getting into the magnet can you get in first and then decide?
Have you explored what other accomodations could be done at her current school? Seems like next year if she's there it would be nice if more than the hour a week pullout could happen.
Next question, will the kids at the gifted magnet elementary progress to the gifted middle school (where she would be going)? Or will they all switch around then? Will other kids from her elementary be going to the gifted middle school, or just her? Are the other 2 kids in her class that are GT going to be changing to the gifted magnet for 2nd, or staying put? Trying to get at how many times she will be needing to make new friends, how many kids would be going with her, etc.
Can you just call up the science teacher at the gifted magnet and see if they like birds? Or ask their front office staff if they can find out if any of the teachers at the school are birder types? Birds is not too rare an interest, at a gifted magnet there may be either a teacher or known particular kids who are really into birds.
On a separate note we got the "Bird Watching Trivia Game" for Xmas, DS3.5 is bird obsessed and loves it, if you don't have that your DD might like it, with 3 levels of questions there's a lot of room for varied levels of bird knowledge. Also there's fun bird quizzes at
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/profile_birds.htmPolly
