My BirdPi Sound Garden.
Welcome to my BirdPi Sound Garden. My bird obsession requires a tiny bit of backstory, seems silly when I say that but it is something that actually means a lot to me: During COVID lock-downs, my partner and I were celebrating a decade together and were feeling stressed about the world. We spent our anniversary locked in an AirBnB and sat in the sunroom watching the bird feeder. After the horrors we saw, it was a tiny moment of serene. When we returned home, we immediately ordered a bird feeder for our own yard. It was a simple reminder of a moment of calm during a storm (spoiler alert: we'd need a lot of that to get through the next few years).
In 2025, we noticed a Robin's nest has been made on our front porch. It was the first time I had ever gotten to witness nature close up like that! We watched mama robin, who we ultimately named Evelyn, and her partner nurture and care for their eggs and it was the sweetest thing ever. They had 5 little bebes and they were growing like weeds! Just days before fledging, devastation reared its ugly little head: our security cameras showed that a stray cat came and ravished the nest in the night (as someone with 3 cats at home - keep your cats indoors please). I awoke to the nest flipped upside down and not a baby in sight. Evelyn flew around all morning calling out for them and I was fucking devastated for her.
I couldn't stop wondering how all the babies got taken and with her outside calling out, I spent all morning looking around the garden to see if any had made an escape. Nothing. Not a single one. I went back out in the afternoon and found a little tiny fluff-ball hidden amongst a plant. I couldn't believe it! I went on a Google spree, wondering what I should do about the situation. There was no way to secure the nest back where it was so I settled on moving the nest to a covered area and hope with all hope that mama Evelyn would find it. I spent all afternoon and evening watching to see if Evelyn could find him but it didn't seem like we were having luck. The next morning, I watched Evelyn drop down and feed the baby where I had placed him and had some minor hope that the baby would make it.
We named the baby Sutekh and after about 5 days of being on the ground, I watched our little friend take its first flight! Sutekh flapped into a tree and was on their merry way to birdhood. It was such a cool experience to have with nature and the local animals in my area. For my birthday that year, my partner surprised me with a video bird feeder and I've been a chronic bird watcher ever since! In what seems to be what happens in my household, we set up an audio server to record our bird friends. And That's how we find ourselves here!
I hope you enjoy my bird sounds! As of writing this, we are almost at 100,000 audio recordings and this ranks as one of my favorite projects. We've made good friends with our local birds and have a lot of regulars. We've hit migration season which had us say goodbye to some of our friends and welcome some newcomers, too. If you run into any issues with the app below, you can click my BirdPi button over in the sidebar and it will open up in a new tab.