Independent, creative, impact-driven media about birds for people.

With birds as our focus, we combine top-tier, impact-driven storytelling, award-winning cinematography, cutting-edge scientific research and an innovative grassroots distribution strategy to tackle America’s most pressing conservation crises and reconnect us to our communities and our landscapes.


We reach, teach, and engage across political, economic, educational and social divides, aiming to transform personal response to political will to save birds – and us.

BirdStory

Independent, creative, impact-driven media about birds for people.

our themes:

Heterogeneity; biodiversity; legal protection and legislation; functional landscapes; climate change; light pollution; habitat restoration; mythology and the artificial narrative; generational loss; extinction; the auditory landscape; personal connection.

eight birds:

Working in partnership with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, BirdStory  has selected eight birds for eight stories that help us understand the causes and impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss – as well as inspire and connect us to birds, each other and our American landscapes.

BASTION: The Northern Gannet

This once endangered bird thrives because of a remote, protected reserve; yet such “fortress conservation” is increasingly challenged by the ubiquity of climate change as warming seas impact fish stocks – threatening commercial fisheries.

DESTINY: The Greater Prairie Chicken

The Greater Prairie Chicken’s predicted functional extinction is a direct result of the on-going, wholesale destruction of Midwestern landscapes through development and grazing practices that threaten prairie biodiversity – and sustainable ranching.

AESTHETIC: The Whip-poor-will

The tidying of nature, as a practice and ideology rooted in the development of our post-War suburbs, has resulted in pathological, national “lawnification” now endangering species like the Whip-poor-will that prefer “messy” habitat.

RESILIENCE: The Whimbrel

Pure human greed nearly put an end to the Whimbrel; collective, bi-partisan laws like the Migratory Bird Act and preservation of key migratory staging areas are powerful acts of reparation that ensure their present persistence.

MARGINS: The Saltmarsh Sparrow

The plain Saltmarsh Sparrow is a canary in the coal mine of climate change: the steady rise in sea-water level is drowning young chicks and pushing the species towards extinction. Even as our own “coastal habitat” of condos and golf courses is under increasingly obvious, measurable threat, we continue to and build (and rebuild).

MYSTERY: The Cahow

300 years ago the Cahow, or Bermuda Petrel, was believed exterminated by Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. Then, in 1951, eight pairs were found on rocky Bermudan outcrop by a local boy. Seabirds are particularly elusive to us: albatrosses, shearwaters, terns represent the sublime and illimitable.

ADAPTATION: The Peregrine Falcon

We laud the success of the Peregrine Falcon in adapting to cityscapes but ignore the millions of migrating songbirds dying in window strikes. Environmental changes are now occurring so quickly that most species’ adaptions – developed over deep time - cannot possibly keep up. Including Homo sapiens.

OBLIVION: The Ivory Gull

Living in complete isolation from humans, this elusive Arctic traveler has been neither adequately filmed nor studied and is bound to the same fate of starvation as the polar bear. As the pack ice melts, we watch with terrible scientific omniscience, this exquisite wild white bird vanish into oblivion.

REPARATION:

Fire blasts through a western forest. Houses explode into flame. Energy-sucking data center sprawl over fields. What is our adaptive response to this? Do we scimply continue? Or do we shape a new Manifest Destiny in which we value the gorgeous, complex, interdependent life entangled in this same net of time and place with us?

impact

BirdStory’s media seeks to reach, teach and engage a truly diverse public about the causes and consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss, and to foster emotional connection to our familiar, local landscapes, and thereby to ignite widespread attitude change, individual and social action.

Reach

As a non-profit with 100% control of our IP BirdStory is building a vascular, grassroots distribution network through birding and conservation organizations, high schools and undergraduate programs, social and rec clubs, hunters, naturalists and community groups.

Teach

From concept to delivery, BirdStory’s media is carefully designed with input from our partners to create stories that increase understanding of key environmental issues at a local, regional and national level.

Engage

By inventing formats, presenting stories from fresh, un-biased perspectives and encouraging informed reflection, BirdStory deliberately seeks to engage neglected audiences and appeal to key conservation constituents – to bridge demographic and education divides.

BASTION: The Northern Gannet

This once endangered bird thrives because of a remote, protected reserve; yet such “fortress conservation” is increasingly challenged by the ubiquity of climate change.

DESTINY: The Greater Prairie Chicken

The Greater Prairie Chicken’s predicted functional extinction is a direct result of the on-going, wholesale destruction of Western landscapes – and our preference for its romantic mythology.

AESTHETIC: The Whip-poor-will

The tidying of nature, as a practice and ideology rooted in the development of our post-War suburbs, has resulted in pathological, national “lawnification” now endangering species like the Whip-poor-will that prefer “messy” habitat.

RESILIENCE: The Whimbrel

Pure human greed nearly put an end to the Whimbrel; collective, bi-partisan laws like the Migratory Bird Act and preservation of key migratory staging areas are powerful acts of reparation that ensure their present persistence.

MARGINS: The Salt Marsh Sparrow

The plain Saltmarsh Sparrow is a canary in the coal mine of climate change: the steady rise in sea-water level is drowning young chicks and pushing the species towards extinction. Even as our own “coastal habitat” of condos and golf course is under increasingly obvious, measurable threat, we continue to and build (and rebuild).

MYSTERY: The Cahow

300 years ago the Cahow, or Bermuda Petrel,  was believed exterminated by Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. Then, in 1951, 8 pairs were found on rocky Bermudan outcrop by a local boy. Seabirds are particularly elusive to us: albatrosses, shearwaters, terns represent the sublime and ineffable.

ADAPTATION: The Peregrine Falcon

We laud the success of the Peregrine Falcon in adapting to cityscapes but ignore the millions of migrating songbirds dying in window strikes. Environmental changes are now occurring so quickly that most species’ adaptions – developed over deep time - cannot possibly keep up.

OBLIVION: The Ivory Gull

Living in complete isolation from humans, this elusive Arctic traveler has been neither adequately filmed nor studied and is bound to the same fate of starvation as the polar bear. As the pack ice melts, we watch, with the terrible scientific omniscience, this exquisite, wild white bird vanish into oblivion.

REPARATION:

Fire blasts through a western forest. Houses explode into flame. What is our adaptive response to this? Do we rebuild in the same place? Or do we shape a new Manifest Destiny for all the gorgeous, complex life entangled in this same net of time and place?