Renowned ornithological illustrator Keith Hansen is nearing the completion of a monumental task: hand-painting approximately 1,000 bird species for a new app called Flock. Hansen recently finished illustration number 420, leaving 584 more to go to complete the visual backbone of the app.
The compendium will cover every bird species recorded from the US and Canada, including those found in waters up to 200 miles from shore, excluding Hawaiian birds. The Flock app was created by Hansen's friends, Adam Donkin and Bob Stevenson, both with extensive experience in the tech and gaming industries.
Flock's mission is to encourage users to engage with birding and the natural world, rather than monopolise their attention. It employs elements of computer gaming and social networking to draw people outdoors, with the broader aim of fostering a community of conservationists.
Stevenson and Donkin began discussing the app in 2016 and started working on Flock in 2017. They decided to self-fund the project to avoid being bound by external rules and to break away from addictive app design conventions.