A love worth earning.A world worth knowing.
Follow naturalist and bird artist Josiah Rook as he travels from the warm southern swamps to the northern seas in search of birds - chasing beauty, science, and a future worth returning home to.
Twelve letters. Twelve months. One journey. One love story.
You are there with him. In every letter.
The Naturalist
A gifted observer and field collector. Josiah travels far and wide to study the natural world and share its wonders. Proud, determined, and hoping to earn the life he has always imagined.
The Correspondent
Intelligent, capable, and curious about the world. Clara keeps the ledger, the printers and the correspondence, and builds the subscriber list her father knows nothing about.
The Gatekeeper
Clara's father is a man of principle and stature. He values reputation, prudence and proof. Josiah must return with evidence of his resolve before he will give his blessing.
Proof before promise.
Cornelis Vandegrift respects Josiah Rook’s character, but character is not a living. Before he will give his blessing, Josiah Rook must return with something he can count:
One hundred paid subscribers for a lettered journal about the natural world, and a publisher willing to stand behind it.
Cornelis Vandegrift
One letter each month.
Josiah’s expedition takes him from the warm southern swamps to the icy northern seas - through towns and wilderness, storms and still mornings.
Each letter follows a different place, a different bird, and a different stage of the journey.
12 Letters
Twelve months of the journey
12 Places
From the southern swamps to the northern seas
12 Birds
Studied, sketched and described
One Story
A love story told in real time
A Romance in Real Time
A love story that unfolds through honest words, distance, and unwavering hope - one letter at a time.
The Natural World Revealed
Learn alongside Josiah as he studies the birds, habitats and landscapes of 1830s America.
A Keepsake You'll Treasure
Handwritten letters and printed artefacts to collect, reread and pass down.
A Fine Print Each Month
A museum-quality bird print in the Audubon tradition, included with every letter.
Meet the maker
My name is Maebh Collins. I live in Co. Louth, on Ireland’s east coast, and I have spent the last few years running Ask About Birds, a small print house making fine-art bird plates in the tradition of the old natural history illustrators.
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.
I write the letters, in his voice. Longhand first, then set in type, with the sketches and the weather notes in the margins where he would have put them. Two sides, one bird, no padding.
To say it plainly, because you should not have to guess: Josiah Rook is an invention, and so is Clara. The birds are real, the places are real, the weather is real, and the plates are real. The invention is only the thread that carries them, and the reason the letters have somewhere to go.
Read Letter No. 0
Twelve letters over twelve months,with an ending that lands.
Delivered Monthly
Posted the first Tuesday, beautifully packaged, straight to your door.
Inspired by History
Set in 1832, alongside the real events and figures of the Audubon era.
Made to be Kept
Archival stock, flat in a rigid mailer. Every piece is made to last.
