pip
blue tit · at willow's garden · 2h
figured out the coconut feeder. took three goes.
- 4
- 8
- 12
- 3
- 2
A minute at the window, written down.
Five things happen in this app, and you will spend nearly all your time on the first one, usually before the kettle has boiled.
spotting and logging
Standing at the sink.
Pick what you have got: a photograph, a few seconds of video, the sound of it, a note, or something somebody said. Tap the bird. Tap what it was doing.
The app reads the whole thing back to you as a sentence, so a row of little pictures is never ambiguous. Then it saves, on your phone, with no signal needed and no account to make.
- Every field is optional except the bird. A note on its own is a whole entry.
- Nothing is asked for at first launch. The camera is asked for when you tap the camera.
These are drawings of the next version of the camera screen. It is not in the phone build yet.
Point the camera.
The camera fills the screen and every button floats over it, each with a word on it. The first chip asks who this is.
Tap, tap, save.
Pick the bird and what it was doing. Jack reads the whole entry back before you save, so a row of little pictures is never ambiguous.
Add more if you want to.
Details opens a tray: what it was up to, who with, where, and who exactly. You can leave all of it alone.
the marks that tell them apart
Is that the same one as yesterday?
That is the real question at a kitchen window, and no field guide answers it. So you write down what makes this one this one, in your own words, pinned to the drawing: the nick in a feather, the pale eye, the turned foot.
- 1pale silver eye
- 2nick in the left primary
- 3pewter nape
jack
jackdaw · Coloeus monedula
with us 1 year, 4 months · 212 spots
- bossy
- chimney pots
- pale eyes
A bird with a name gets its own page, and everything you ever logged about it is on that page in the order it happened. A bird without one is still tracked. You can name it later, and the entries follow.
what the bird teaches you
Your county, filling in.
A bird you have seen is drawn in colour. One you have not is a pale shadow of the same drawing, waiting. Nothing is locked behind a purchase and nothing is a wall of text.
Watch one once and you get what it eats, what eats it, what it does across the year, and its call. Watch it three times and you get what it does across a day. That is roughly how you learned about the birds you already know.
the year
- nest · apr–may
- fledge · jun
- flocks · oct–feb
the day
- first to call
- family groups
- church towers
- the woods
what it eats, and what eats it
suet, sunflower hearts, leatherjackets, scraps
taken by sparrowhawk and peregrine
the callxeno-canto XC784920
peak district patch
14 of 48 county birbs
- jack
- barnaby
- pip
- blackbird
- woody
- limpy
- rarewaxwing
- pied
- dunnock
- goldcrest
- sparrowhawk
- green woodpecker
not yet on your patch. keep an eye on the berry bushes.
keeping them fed
Reminders that never sulk at you.
A feeder needs scrubbing more often than most people think, and whole peanuts can choke a fledgling. So you can give each duty a season, and the chores are tiles you tap. Miss one and nothing happens.
today
- feeder7amdone
- bath8amdone
- water8amnot done yet
- mealwormsdusknot done yet
this week
- clean feedersunnot done yet
- suet blockwednot done yet
- check boxsatnot done yet
- leave hedgetill sepnot done yet
what a reminder is here
A notification your own phone schedules, and nothing else. It is not counted, not synced and not shared.
Ticking a duty cancels the rest of today's reminders for it, so the phone does not ask you twice.
feeder's full. barnaby says ta.
seeds +5
the gardens around you
Share one thing, or share nothing at all.
Everything you log is private until you decide otherwise, one entry at a time. Before anything is sent, the app shows you exactly what a stranger would see, and strips the metadata off the picture.
- ours
- willow's
- stream-side
- waxwing
peak north cell · about 3 km. A garden sits where its gardener put it, and the stream is a drawing.
the only replies there are
- 4
- 8
- 12
- 3
- 2
A feather, a seed, a heart, a sparkle, a cup of tea. There is no comment box, no follower count and nothing to grow. You can mute a garden and nobody is told.
a blackbird
blackbird · at stream-side · 5h
0:22
evening song from the alder
- 2
- 1
- 6
- 0
- 3
the gardens on your cloth
willow's garden
three hawthorns, a mossy bath · 4 regulars
stream-side
alder and a stream · 2 regulars
the hawthorns · ours
published · 4 pinned regulars
Open one and you get what its gardener published and nothing else: what grows there, the regulars they pinned, the entries they shared. Mute it and it leaves your feed without anybody being told.