Josiah Rook. In the field, spring 1832.
He went after
the birds of America.
He wrote to her. A bird letter subscription, posted monthly.
A love story told in twelve letters,
each one with a fine-art bird plate.
Clara Vandegrift. Bordentown, New Jersey.
She keeps the ledger.
He keeps writing.
She runs the home office of his book: the printers, the paper, the list of subscribers. Her father has named one impossible condition.
Read the story
Your mailbox. The first Tuesday of the month.
You read
over her shoulder.
His letter, the bird he painted, a poem and a keepsake. Twelve envelopes, and then the story ends.
See what's insideWild Bird Post
One love story.
Twelve letters.
A bird in every one.
Josiah Rook has a dream: to publish the greatest book of American birds ever made - by subscription, not by patronage. His work has always gone out under other men’s names.
Clara Vandegrift, the woman he is courting, runs the home office from Bordentown: the ledger, the printers, the paper samples, the plates promised against the plates finished. And, unknown to her father, she begins quietly building the list of subscribers who believe in him.
Twelve letters. One impossible condition. And the distance between a man’s ambition and a life worth coming home to.
The whole story
What arrives each month.
- A Handwritten Letter. Two sides in his hand, with sketches down the margins, route references and whatever the weather was doing when he wrote it.
- A Fine Art Bird Print. A museum-quality print of a bird from Josiah’s travels, in the Audubon tradition, printed edge to edge on archival fine art paper.
- A Poem Postcard. An original poem by Josiah, printed on vintage-style postcard stock - perfect for keeping, or for sending on.
- Field Notes & Paper Ephemera. A field note card and occasional paper keepsakes from his travels - maps, clippings, labels, or journal fragments.
- A Monthly Surprise. A unique paper keepsake that changes every month. It is a surprise - never revealed in advance.
In their world
Two desks. One correspondence.
Short silent scenes. AI dramatisations of our original historical fiction. Press play.
Twelve letters, and then it ends.
Twelve months on the road, March to February. One letter and one plate each month, and an ending that lands in the twelfth. Not a subscription that runs until you remember to stop it: a story that finishes, with every piece of it kept.
- I Bordentown March 1832
- II Charleston April 1832
- III Florida May 1832
- IV The Swamps June 1832
- V Northward July 1832
- VI Bay of Fundy August 1832
- VII At Sea September 1832
- VIII Labrador October 1832
- IX The Return November 1832
- X The Interior December 1832
- XI Night of Stars January 1833
- XII Home February 1833
Which bird carries each month stays sealed until that letter is in the post. Month one is the Eastern Bluebird.
Letter No. 0 · The Cardinal
Read one before you decide anything.
We will not describe a letter and ask you to picture it. A whole letter is on the site, with its plate and its poem, exactly as it arrives. Nothing is hidden behind a checkout.
Every backyard has its winter king, and yours wears red. When the warblers and the swallows pack up in autumn and stream away south, the cardinal considers the whole arrangement and politely declines.
$24 a month, postage included.
One envelope, one price. A bird letter subscription with no ladder to climb and no better envelope for people who spend more.
-
Monthly
$24/month
Billed monthly
Flexible and effortless.
-
Six Months
$135one-time
$22.50 a month
Half the road.
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Best value
The Full Year
$240one-time
$20 a month
The whole story, start to finish.
Postage to the US, Canada and Europe is included in every one of them. Prices are in US dollars.
Pay $24 monthly, $135 once for six months or $240 once for the full year. Prepaid plans do not renew.
Why I made this
I wanted to make the thing I would want to receive: something on paper, made slowly, that asks nothing of you except that you open it.
Wild Bird Post started at my own letterbox. The walk down the drive had become a chore. Bills, flyers, a menu for a takeaway that closed last year. The only good post I could remember was a letter from my mother, years old now, still in the kitchen drawer.
So: one envelope a month, written by hand first and then set in type, folded and stamped at one desk in Co. Louth and posted through An Post on the first Tuesday. Post that somebody is glad to find.
With love, Maebh · Co. Louth
The year begins in March 1832