The birds outside your window, painted for your wall.
Private beta · Surrey, EnglandBirdFrame is a small listener that sits outside and pays attention. The first time it hears a species that day, that bird goes up on the wall: an original watercolour, painted for your list, in the manner of a well-kept field journal.
It shows on any TV, monitor or screen you already have, and looks especially at home on an always-on gallery display such as a Samsung Frame in Art Mode. Designed for kitchen walls, and equally for the visitor centre at a heritage garden, a school corridor, or the lounge of a retirement village. At dawn the wall clears and the day begins again.
No feeder cameras, no clips to scroll through, nothing to check. Just the birds outside, quietly keeping their own gallery.
Listening happens on the device. Recordings stay on your own network.
A small listener outside picks out birdsong from the general racket of lawnmowers and aeroplanes, and names the species on the spot. The identification happens on the device itself - the audio never leaves your own network, and nothing is uploaded to be checked by anyone.
on-device · nothing sent awayThe first time a species is heard on a given day, BirdFrame puts its portrait up: loose watercolour and ink on cream paper, in the manner of a well-thumbed field journal. Each bird is painted once and the painting is kept for good, so your wren is always your wren.
one portrait per species · kept for goodThe day’s gallery appears on whatever screen you point it at: a spare television, a monitor in the corridor, or a Samsung Frame in Art Mode, which is where it looks its best. No menus, no now loading, just pictures on a wall. It waits politely if someone is watching the telly, and at first light the wall is cleared for a new day.
any screen · resets at dawn
Twelve birds from one week in a Surrey garden. Your own patch will keep a different list.
One portrait at a time, filling the whole screen, changing every few minutes, with each new arrival slipping in as it is heard. The room gets a slow procession of the day’s visitors - a robin over breakfast, a jay by lunch. Best if you like a painting to be a painting.
one species · one frame · rotates quietly
Every bird heard today painted onto a single plate, names lettered beneath, on cream paper. It grows as the day does - by dusk it is a record of the whole day, and it is rather hard to walk past without counting them. Popular where people pass by and stop to look.
the whole day · one painting · repainted as it grows
Either mode runs on any TV, monitor or projector you already own. A Samsung Frame in Art Mode is the handsomest home for it, but nothing here depends on one.
A handful so far, deliberately. Each one is somewhere we can get back to easily, because the whole point of a private beta is finding out what real weather and real buildings do to it.
A screen on a corridor wall that most of the school walks past four times a day. The grounds are old and well planted, which turns out to matter: the list runs longer here than anywhere, and by the end of a summer afternoon the poster is quite crowded.
It has been adopted, in the way these things are. There is an unofficial rota of pupils who check it on the way in, and a running dispute about whether the nuthatch was really a nuthatch.
It has done more for how the girls notice the grounds than anything we could have put on a display board.
Where BirdFrame started, and still the site that gets everything tried on it first. An ordinary suburban garden, one determined robin, and a good deal more overhead traffic than anybody expected before there was something on the wall counting it.
Nothing here is a demonstration rig. If it cannot survive a family kitchen, a school corridor has no chance.
Breakfast now involves a certain amount of looking up at the wall and saying “when did that arrive?”
nothing to photograph yet
A site has been walked and the listening positions chosen, but nothing is hanging on a wall there yet. It will appear here properly, with its own photograph, once it has seen a full season and has something honest to say about it.
There is room for one or two more this year. If you have birds outside and a screen indoors, say hello.
BirdFrame is in private beta - a handful of sites, mostly in the south of England, while we get the listening right in real weather. If you have birds outside and a screen indoors, we would like to hear from you. Heritage gardens, schools, care homes and retirement villages are as welcome as a back garden with one determined robin in it.
Tell us roughly where you are and what the place is like: garden, grounds, courtyard, playing field. We read every message and reply in person, though not always the same day.
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