35-second video, painted illustration style, warm dawn palette. SOUND: a single clear robin song opens dry and close, then a goldfinch twitter and a song thrush phrase flicker over a swelling recording of a real garden dawn chorus, which continues softly underneath the whole film. ACTION: Pip, a small white-and-pink long-tailed tit, pops into the centre of a sunlit valley and bobs his head. A rainbow soundwave pulses out from his beak and coloured sparkles fly outwards, slowing into an oval ring of gold-framed bird portraits — robin, wren, goldfinch, song thrush. TEXT: "Birdsong guessing game / Collecting the dawn chorus / To share and enjoy". The scene dissolves to an ancient wooded valley at first light. A nightingale sings a long, rich phrase while the soundwave ripples. TEXT: "Dawn breaks, listen close / Guess who sings here now and then / Cherish each bird's song". Pip preens and sings on a mossy bank as a single tawny owl hoots in the distance. TEXT: "Ancient guide called Pip / Since the ice left the valley / Pip has heard it all". Then a slow walk through time: Roman Bath, Aberdeen's Granite City, an urban void in Frome, Georgian Bath, modern Bath. Each backdrop dissolves into the next as one bird calls — cuckoo, puffin, swift, song thrush, goldfinch — and its portrait joins a rising row. Small captions name each place, e.g. "GRANITE CITY · ABERDEEN". TEXT: "Travelling through time / Year by year and bird by bird / History in song". The five voices layer back together into a chorus over a green, tree-filled future city, and a struck gold medal rises in the centre: Pip singing in relief, framed by a twirl of flourishes and a ring of oval bird cameos. TEXT: "Guess and collect songs / Add each voice to the chorus / To share and enjoy". The birdsong fades. TEXT: "Dawn Chorus Quest — FREE WEB GAME — bird-times.lovable.app".

Dawn Chorus Quest

A guessing game about British bird song and time travel

Dawn Chorus Quest — a love letter to the disappearing songs of nature. Play the quest. Share the story. Reunite the chorus.

I made Dawn Chorus Quest, to share and enjoy the sounds of British bird songs and to understand the how the sound of daybreak is changing. It’s a game inspired by international dawn chorus day, Bath Digital Festival Buildathon, Douglas Adam’s ‘Last Chance to See,’ and bird song visualisations by Lucio Arese.

It’s about the shifting baseline of the dawn chorus, and how our perception of the richness and variety of natural sound is diminished as habitats and species are in decline.

Play the game on your browser at https://bird-times.lovable.app/

How to Play

  1. Listen — A bird call plays. A sound wave visualisation pulses in time with the audio.
  2. Guess — Tap the bird you think is singing
  3. Learn — Collect the chorus, win a medal when a level is complete
  4. Travel — Slide between eras and hear how the chorus changes.
  5. Share — Collect the chorus, listen to the birds, and share and enjoy!

Dawn Chorus Quest is a free, browser-based birdsong guessing game that takes players on a time-travelling journey through the changing dawn chorus of British locations. Players listen to real bird calls, identify the species singing, and witness how bird abundance has risen and fallen across millennia — from ancient wildwood to a hopeful solarpunk future.

Cherish the chorus.

Try it at https://bird-times.lovable.app/

The story so far…

Dawn Chorus Quest is about identifying British birdsong, the history of British bird populations, and the potential for a brighter future for birds. I started playing with the idea around dawn chorus day, and made the first prototype at Bath Digital Festival.

I am chuffed to say that a prototype of this game won ‘best app’ at the Bath Digital Festival Buildathon.

You can try this link to play the first version of the game: Dawn-Chorus-Quest.lovable.app

Watch this video to see how the prototype game works, and read on for inspirations, data sources and technical info.

A time travel journey through the dawn chorus.

We have spent the last few centuries “extracting value” from nature, but in the process we accidentally muted the morning. We are now in the awkward position of needing a digital device to remind us what a good morning should actually sound like.

Listen to the dawn chorus. Identify the bird song. Understand the trends.

Dawn Chorus Quest was built on the generosity of open data, the creativity of artists and authors, and those enthusiastic people who get up before sunrise to record birdsong.

Our quest is to celebrate the beauty of the birdsong we have left, and begin to bring back the rich, chaotic symphony of the past.

Play the quest. Share the story. Reunite the chorus.

Inspirations

Bath Digital Festival Buildathon

The game was first conceived on International Dawn Chorus Day 2026, and the prototype was built at the Bath Digital Festival buildathon, an evening of experimenting with ideas and app building AI tools.

Huge thanks to Tim Robinson and Rita Lazaro, who sat with me, shared encouragement, ideas and enthusiasm.

Lucio Arese — Seeing Birdsong

Lucio Arese’s generative visualisations of birdsong showed me that a bird song can be heard with the eyes as well as the ears. The waveform and particle trail in this game owe a great deal to that insight.

Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine — Last Chance to See

The wry, affectionate tone of Douglas Adams’ nature travelogue runs through every fact and description in this app. If you have not read Last Chance to See, you are in for a treat — and a useful reminder that the world is still full of extraordinary things we are in danger of taking for granted.

About the creator

Jenny Macdonald

Dawn Chorus Quest was developed by Jenny Macdonald in May 2026, inspired by International Dawn Chorus Day. Her aim is to help more people notice, enjoy and protect the birds that still sing around us.

Data & media sources

  • Bird songs — every audio clip is from Wikimedia Commons, contributed by recordists under free licences. We are grateful to the community of naturalists who upload their field recordings for everyone to hear.
  • Bird photographs — all images are also from Wikimedia Commons, credited to the talented photographers who shared them under Creative Commons licences.
  • Population data — the long-term decline narrative draws on monitoring by the RSPB and the British Trust for Ornithology. Their volunteer surveys are the closest thing British birdlife has to a continuous heartbeat.
  • Species information — names, taxonomy and natural history pointers are drawn from Wikipedia, the greatest collaborative reference work ever assembled.

Built with

Design & development — This game was designed and built with the help of Lovable, the AI software engineering platform, and Green PT AI, whose guidance shaped the conservation narrative and the overall direction of the project.

Thanks and feedback 🙂

Thanks for playing — please send your feedback about this app. Thank you to every birder who uploads a recording, every photographer who shares a sharp portrait, and every volunteer who counts nests in the rain. The chorus belongs to all of us.

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