GardenBirbs

The one with the bent foot has a name now.

You are watching the same jackdaw boss the same starlings off the same feeder, every morning. This is where you write that down.

Join the waiting list

Coming soon to iPhone and Android™ phones.

who this garden already knows

jack
barnaby
woody
limpy
pip
blackbird
someone new

on the feeder · just now

Watch a little of the garden.

The first frame of the film: in a sunny garden with a fence and sunflowers, a pigeon stands by a bird bath beneath the words "The one with the bent foot has a name now." Soft woodland music and a robin singing play with the film. — Jack bossing the starlings off the feeder, a page a day, point, tap and save, three birds and their histories, the marks you earn, and what it will never do to you. The phone screens in it are mockups, and the app is coming soon.

A page a day, and none of it is a form.

A photograph. Something your daughter said. Six seconds of a robin on a spade handle. The sound of the first song from the hawthorn. A line of writing when there is nothing to point a camera at.

They all sit on the same page, in the order they happened, and they all stay on your phone.

nothing here leaves the phone

today's page · mon 31 aug

jack

jackdaw · 8:14

grabbing suet, shouting at the magpie

jack squabbles with a magpie

pip

blue tit · 7:02

0:11

first song from the hawthorn

pip sings

barnaby

robin · 7:40

“he sits on the spade like he owns it”
mum

limpy

feral pigeon · 6:55

0:06 / 0:08

under the sunflower feeder again, waiting for the drops

limpy snacks

a blackbird

not named yet · yesterday

turned the leaf litter over under the hedge for twenty minutes

in the hedgejuvenile

Not a species. A particular bird, with a history.

Most bird apps want to tell you that is a jackdaw. You already know it is a jackdaw. What you want is to know it is that jackdaw, the one with the pale eye who nests in the left chimney pot, and to remember what he did last April.

Sixty birds are drawn so far, and every one is one drawing shown at three sizes: big enough to have a personality on your garden page, small enough to be a face in a row, small enough again to be a stamp beside a name.

jack
jackdaw
Pale silver eye, pewter nape. Nests in the left chimney pot and bosses the starlings.
barnaby
robin
A scarred orange bib. Sits on the spade handle while the garden is turned.
woody
woodpigeon
White neck flash. Roosts in the copper beech and bows at Penny on the fence.
limpy
feral pigeon
A turned left foot. Waits under the sunflower feeder for the drops.
pip
blue tit
Cobalt cap, white cheek, dark eyestripe.
blackbird
not named yet
Turns the leaf litter under the hedge. Nobody has given him a name.

The same garden, all year.

What the birds are doing depends on the weather and the month. Here is one robin under four skies.

first light
The dawn chorus starts before you are up.
rain
after dark
Tawny owls call across the gardens in autumn.
frost

Two streets away, somebody else is watching too.

Share one entry and it joins a cloth of nearby gardens. Not a map: your phone rounds where you are, before anything is sent, to a hexagon less than three kilometres across, and a garden sits on the cloth wherever its gardener put it.

ours
willow's
stream-side
waxwing

Five ways to reply: a feather, a seed, a heart, a sparkle, a cup of tea.
No comments. There is nothing to argue with.
You can mute a garden, and nobody is told.
A rare visitor is a pin on the cloth, never a coordinate.

near the peak north cell

pip

blue tit · at willow's garden · 2h

figured out the coconut feeder. took three goes.

4
8
12
3
2

a blackbird

blackbird · at stream-side · 5h

0:22

evening song from the alder

2
1
6
0
3

the only way anything leaves

One morning. Two lives, and you pick.

Everything is on your phone and stays there. Share a single entry and it becomes a card in the neighbourhood, one entry at a time, never a folder and never everything.

on your page

jack

jackdaw · 8:14

grabbing suet, shouting at the magpie

jack squabbles with a magpie

two streets away, if you say so

jack

jackdaw · at the hawthorns · 2h

grabbing suet, shouting at the magpie

2
5
9
1
3

left on the phone, every time

where the photograph was taken
the minute it happened
the note you wrote for yourself
who said the thing you wrote down

You see this list, filled in with your own entry, before anything is sent. Take a post down later and the copy in the neighbourhood goes; the morning stays on your page, because it was always yours.

Every pin is a garden you can knock on.

A garden's page is built only from what its gardener published: the name they chose, what grows there, up to four regulars they pinned, and the entries they shared. Their journal is not read to draw it, so there is nothing on it they did not decide to put there.

willow's garden

three hawthorns, a mossy bath · 4 regulars

in your feed

stream-side

alder and a stream · 2 regulars

muted

the hawthorns · ours

published · 4 pinned regulars

yours to edit

watching is a filter, not a following

Muting a garden takes it out of your own feed and does nothing else. The gardener is never told, there is no number beside anybody's name, and there is nothing to build a follower list out of.

4
8
12
3
5

A feather, a seed, a heart, a sparkle, a cup of tea. That is the whole reply set, and there is no comment box under it.

willow's garden

peak north patch · about 3 km

in your feed

cottage garden with three hawthorns, a mossy shallow bath and sheltered niger feeders.

3 baths
hawthorn hedge
sunflower feeders
cat-safe

regulars

pip
barnaby
pied

pip

blue tit · 2h

figured out the coconut feeder

pied

magpie · tue

mobbed a starling off the mealworms

barnaby

robin · mon

0:31

song from the bath

Marks you earn by watching.

Not points, and not a quest list. A seal is inked when something actually happened in your garden: your first photograph, the first time you stop to listen, a year to the day since you met the pigeon with the bad foot. You will not collect them all, and that is rather the point.

inked

first sightingjack · 4 mar
first photojack · 4 mar
named a regularbarnaby · 9 mar

soon

limpy's yearin 3 days
ten species8 of 10

paper

dawn chorus
four seasons
night owl

What it will never do to you.

None of this is a setting we will add later. It is simply not what the app is for.

No rarity score, no leaderboard.
No follower counts, and no comments.
Nobody is told where you live.
No account needed to keep a journal.
No ad networks, and nothing tracks your garden for advertisers.

Why each of those is missing on purpose

Tell me when it is out

One email when the apps are ready, then a short note once a month. Nothing else, and you can leave any time.