The mission of the Flock app is quietly subversive: to encourage users to ditch their screens and explore the wonderful world of birding
On a brilliantly bright afternoon in his gallery and studio in Bolinas, a small town on the northern California coast, Keith Hansen was putting the finishing touches on a watercolor of an almost improbably flamboyant painted bunting.
With an ultra-fine sable brush, he made a few intricate additions to the cobalt blue plumage on the bunting’s head, and, satisfied with his work, slipped the watercolor into a stout binder that every few days welcomes a new addition.
“That was number 420,” he said. Or to put it another way, just 584 to go.
Hansen, a renowned ornithological illustrator and author, has a monumental task – a hand-painted compendium of every one of the roughly 1,000 bird species ever recorded from the US and Canada, including those found in waters up to 200 miles from shore, Hawaiian birds not included. When finished, it will complete the visual backbone of an app called Flock, whose mission, compared with that of most apps, is quietly subversive.
For rather than seeking to monopolize and monetize its users’ attention, it deftly employs elements of computer gaming and social networking to draw people outward, into the world of birding, with the broader aim of cultivating a community of conservationists.
Flock was conceived and created by two of Hansen’s friends, Adam Donkin and Bob Stevenson. Both have impressive tech industry CVs. Donkin, 52, who lives not far from Hansen in Marin county’s San Geronimo valley, worked for many years as a product and user experience designer. As a lead product designer at Amazon, he led the charge on design for several models of the Kindle e-reader.
Stevenson, a 58-year-old Scotsman, lives in St Helena in the Napa valley. He founded his first company in Edinburgh at 18, and at 24, moved to California to work as an art director for Richard Branson’s Virgin Games, embarking on a decades-long career as an art or design director, or as a producer, for more than 50 video games.
Despite their disparate disciplines, the three friends are united by a shared passion for birds and birding.
Hansen fell in love with the avian world in sixth grade, when, on a walk in the Maryland woods, his brother, Rob, drew his attention to a cedar waxwing. “It’s just an exquisite bird,” Hansen recalled. He began illustrating birds during his senior year of high school, and in 1986 – after a decade and a half observing and studying birds on numerous expeditions – he settled in Bolinas, opening his gallery there in 1991.
Donkin grew up on the San Francisco peninsula and began birding at the age of four under the wing of his father’s friend Rich Stallcup, an esteemed ornithologist and birder, and a founder of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. “He was like a nature wizard,” said Donkin. “Birds and animals would appear when you were in the field with him. He knew every bird by call and by sight.”
Donkin moved to Marin in 2012. “When I moved to Marin,” he said, “Rich introduced me to the thriving birding community here, including Keith.”
That same year, Stevenson was looking for a designer for his new company. “One of our investors recommended that we chat with this designer, Adam,” said Stevenson. “It was meant to be a quick call, but we ended up talking for over an hour. We became friends on the first call.”
In 2016, Donkin visited Stevenson at his home in the southern Marin town of Tiburon, overlooking Richardson Bay, a major habitat for migrating waterbirds. “One day Adam came round to the house,” Stevenson recalled. “I didn’t know that he was an avid birder. He turned up and said, ‘Hey, dude, you’ve got to bird! Do you have binoculars?’”
Stevenson, who had recently stepped away from his company to focus on his family, fell hard and fast for birding. He bought binoculars, scopes and cameras, began birding from his deck, and, as an outlet for his avian photography, opened his own gallery in Tiburon.
