Dawn Chorus Quest

A free birdsong guessing game. Listen to bird songs. Guess who is singing. Collect the chorus and travel through time to hear how it  changes.

What is it?

Dawn Chorus Quest is a browser-based guessing game where you listen to real bird calls, identify the species, and collect their voices into a chorus. As you play, you travel through time, from the ancient wildwood before humans arrived, through Roman, Medieval, Georgian and Modern eras, to a solarpunk future where the birds have returned.

Each era sounds different. The ancient forest is dense and layered. The Victorian era is quieter. Modern day is sparse. The future depends on what we do next.

How to play

1. Listen to the bird call
2. Guess which bird is singing from the choices shown
3. Collect each correct bird into your chorus
4. Play the chorus and hear all your collected birds sing together
5. Travel through time to explore each era
6. Share each chorus you collect

Locations

• Bath, Somerset — Seven chapters of the Avon valley, from ancient wildwood to a solarpunk future
• Saxonvale, Frome — Can the community bring the dawn chorus back to a lost corner of Frome?
• Aberdeen, Scotland — Granite, pine forest and the North Sea; a coast of divers, seabirds and Caledonian rarities
• Cardiff, Wales — Coming soon

Meet Pip

Your guide is Pip, an improbably old long-tailed tit who has been listening to the valley since the ice left. Pip has heard it all: the full chorus of the ancient forest, the thinning silence of the modern era, and the tentative return of birdsong in a rewilded future.

Why I made this

Britain has lost millions of birds since 1970. Reading that statistic is one thing. Hearing it is another.

I made Dawn Chorus Quest because I want people to hear what we are losing, and to imagine what we could bring back. It is inspired by International Dawn Chorus Day, the Bath Digital Festival Buildathon, Douglas Adams' "Last Chance to See," and a lifetime of listening to birds in the garden at dawn in Somerset.

It is not a lecture. It is a love letter to what we still have, and what we could rebuild.

Accessibility

Dawn Chorus Quest is designed to be playable by everyone.

• Large text toggle bumps the whole game up one size
• Calm mode disables all shake, bloom and sparkle effects
• Song descriptions display a written reminder of each call
• Alt text on all share cards and images
• Keyboard navigable throughout

Accessibility is not an add-on. It is built in from the start.

Credits

• Design and development: Jen Mac
• Bird calls: xeno-canto, the open-source birdsong archive
• Dawn chorus bed recording: A real garden in Somerset, UK
• Built with: Lovable (AI-assisted development) and Remotion (promo reel)
• Licence: Artistic License 2.0 (code), Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (assets)

Follow development

• Blog: doingtheplan.com
• BlueSky: @jen-m-a-c.bsky.social
• Play the latest version: bird-times.lovable.app