jack
jackdaw · 8:14
grabbing suet, shouting at the magpie
jack squabbles with a magpie
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.
who this garden already knows
- jack
- barnaby
- woody
- limpy
- pip
- blackbird
- someone new
on the feeder · just now
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
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
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 entirely on the weather and the month, so the app knows both, and says so in about six words rather than a warning box.
first light
The dawn chorus starts before you are up.
rain at four
Wet weather empties the feeder twice as fast.
after dark
Tawny owls call across the gardens in autumn.
hard frost
A bowl of unfrozen water matters more than food.
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 about three and a half 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. Nobody is told, and nobody has followers.
- Rare visitors are pinned at nature reserves, not houses.
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
stream-side
alder and a stream · 2 regulars
the hawthorns · ours
published · 4 pinned regulars
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 3.5 km
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: a nestbox taken, the first crow you gave a name to, 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 corvidjack · 4 mar
- named a regularbarnaby · 9 mar
soon
- limpy's yearin 3 days
- ten species8 of 10
paper
- rare visitor
- four seasons
- night owl
What it will never do to you.
None of this is coming later. It is simply not what the app is for.
- No life list, no rarity score, no leaderboard.
- No followers, no feed to scroll, no comments.
- No streak you can break and feel bad about.
- Nobody is told where you live.
- No account needed to keep a journal.
- No advertising, ever.