The ornithological artist drawing 1,000 birds by hand – all for an app that wants you off your phone
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Keith Hansen, a renowned ornithological illustrator, is hand-painting watercolors of roughly 1,000 bird species recorded from the US and Canada (Hawaiian birds excluded); he had completed 420 at time of writing, with each illustration taking up to four days.
- Flock launched on Apple's App Store in early 2025 and grew from about 100 users in April to roughly 1,000, with no marketing behind it.
- Adam Donkin (former lead product designer on several Kindle models at Amazon) and Bob Stevenson (art/design director on more than 50 video games) self-funded the app to avoid being "bound by anyone's rules," initially considering partnerships with Audubon or the Cornell Lab of Ornithology before going independent.
- The app deliberately replaces "like" buttons with "high-five" buttons — explicitly so children don't collect likes — and uses leaderboards, life lists, and species rarity to drive real-world birding rather than screen time.
- Bob Stevenson used AI to animate Hansen's static illustrations, giving birds lifelike movement: a white-crowned sparrow darts its head inquisitively, while a great blue heron tiptoes along a sandy bank preparing to strike.
- Bestselling author Amy Tan, a friend of the founders who logged her first sightings last summer, called Flock "hands down the most beautiful bird app."
Why it matters: For Flock's roughly 1,000 early users, the app delivers a rare digital-to-physical bridge: every species in its illustrated compendium is tied to finding a real bird outdoors. Its growth without marketing — and its explicit rejection of like-based engagement — offers a working model for conservation-focused app design that competes on attention rather than captivity.
Ask SkimNews
