You are giving a letter about a wild bird, posted to their door on the first Tuesday of every month, with a fine-art bird plate, a poem card, a field note and a paper keepsake in the same envelope. Three months, six months, or the full year.
Ordering is not open yet. Join the waitlist and you will have the posting date, and the first chance to give it, before anyone else.
Three, six or twelve months. Nothing renews on its own.
Wild Bird Post is a letter subscription about wild birds. One envelope goes out every month carrying a letter from Josiah Rook, a field collector working his way across 1830s America, along with a fine-art bird plate, printed edge to edge on archival paper, a poem card, a field note and one paper keepsake. Twelve letters tell one finished story, and then it ends.
Given as a present it does the thing a present almost never does. It turns up again. The person you gave it to opens something on the first Tuesday of the month, for as long as the gift runs, and every piece of it is made to be kept.
Not in the way that phrase is usually meant, and it is worth being straight about that before anyone spends money. There is no seed in it. No feeder, no mug, no enamel pin, no bird-themed trinket, nothing to find a shelf for. Everything inside the envelope is paper: something to read, something to frame, and something small to keep.
So if the person you are buying for would love a box of objects to unpack, a food-and-gadget box will genuinely suit them better and we would rather say so than take the order. If they would rather have something to read and something to put on a wall, this is the closer fit.
The bird subscription boxes compared, ours included and not flattered. Or, if you are weighing letter clubs against each other, letter subscriptions for adults is the wider comparison.
The first one is the biggest, because it carries the gift as well as the letter. Inside:
The story opens at Bordentown. He sets out. Something in the orchard is already behaving as though the spring had arrived. The plate that travels with it is the eastern bluebird.
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.
Twelve is the whole story, from the first letter to the ending. Three and six are chapters of it, and both stop tidily on their own.
3-Month Gift
A thoughtful short run.
$69
$23 a month · one-time
Get the Date First6-Month Gift
Half the road.
$132
$22 a month · one-time
Get the Date FirstThe Full Year
The whole story, start to finish.
$249
$20.75 a month · one-time
Get the Date FirstPrices are set. Ordering is not open yet, so nothing on this page takes a payment.
What you pay
A gift will be a single payment for a fixed number of months: $69, $132 or $249. Postage to the US, Canada and Europe is included in the price, so there is no delivery charge waiting at the end and no separate shipping tier to choose.
Nothing renews behind your back. When the months you paid for are used up, that is the end of it, and you will not find a charge on a card twelve months later for something you had forgotten about.
What they get
One envelope a month for the length of the gift, each carrying the five things above. They are asked for nothing: no card, no sign-up, no account to set up before the first letter can reach them, no reminder emails asking them to keep it going.
If they want to carry on after the gift finishes, they will be able to, on the monthly plan, at $24 a month. That is their decision to make, not a default they have to escape.
You will write a message and it will be printed on a card that travels inside the first envelope, so it arrives in the post rather than in an inbox. The card itself, its stock and how many words sit comfortably on it, is still being settled with the printer. We would rather tell you that than publish a specification and change it later.
They will not. No price, no invoice, no packing slip, no renewal notice and no line telling them what their gift was worth will go into the envelope. The card carries your message, the letter carries the story, and that is the whole of it. That is a decision about what a gift should feel like, not a technicality.
Every envelope leaves on the first Tuesday of every month, all of them together, from one post office in Co. Louth. A gift will follow that same rhythm: the first envelope goes out on the next posting Tuesday, and each one after it on the same day of the month. From Ireland, delivery usually runs 7 to 12 days to the US and Canada, and 5 to 10 across Europe.
Here is the honest position. Because every envelope leaves on one fixed day, a gift arranged the night before a birthday will not be in anybody's hands by morning, and a giver in that position needs something to hand over on the day. A printable announcement card is the obvious answer to that. It does not exist yet, there is nothing to download, and we are not going to link to a file that has not been made. It is on the list, and the waitlist hears when it is ready.
She has been given candles and she has been given scarves. This one keeps arriving after the day is over, and it is about something she actually watches out of the kitchen window.
Real post, in a large and legible hand, with something worth keeping inside it. For anyone whose letterbox has held nothing but bills for a decade, the arrival is half the present.
Not a life-list keeper necessarily, and not a subspecies pedant. Someone who knows their feeder regulars by heart and would rather read about a bird than tick it.
The bird is the subject, but the envelope is the point. Stamped, addressed by hand, and heavy enough that they will know before they open it that it is not a bill.
More on giving: how to give a letter subscription, retirement gifts for a birdwatcher, and Christmas gifts for bird lovers. If it is the artwork they would love most, the bird art subscription page goes into the plates properly.
And if what you actually want is a single present rather than something that keeps arriving, askaboutbirds.com covers the wider ground of gifts for bird lovers, prints included.
the US, Canada and Europe, every envelope posted from Ireland by An Post. Postage is included in the price, so the figure on this page is the figure, and letters and small printed matter at these values travel as ordinary international post with nothing to pay on arrival.
If the person you are buying for lives outside those three, write to us before you plan anything around it and we will tell you honestly whether we can reach them.
It ends. A gift is a fixed number of months and it stops at the end of them: no rollover, no card charged again, and nobody put in the awkward position of having to cancel something they never bought.
The full year is the one that ends properly rather than merely stopping. Twelve letters is the whole series, and the twelfth answers the question the first one asks. If they want more letters after that, the monthly plan will be there, and it will be theirs to start.
It is remarkable how quickly a man discovers defects when the purse is in his own hand.Letter No. 321, Atchafalaya Basin, May 1832
A whole letter is on the site, with its plate and its poem, exactly as it arrives. Nothing is hidden behind the checkout.
It is the fairest test there is before you give something to somebody else. Read Letter No. 0 the way they would read it, and if it is not their sort of thing you will know in five minutes and it will not have cost you anything.
Not yet. Ordering has not opened, and this page is the place to decide rather than the place to pay. Joining the waitlist is free and gets you three things: Letter No. 0 free by email, the posting date before anyone else, and first chance to subscribe or to give it when ordering opens.
Not in the usual sense. There is no seed, no feeder, no mug and no bird-themed trinket. Everything in the envelope is paper: a letter, a fine-art bird plate, a poem card, a field note and one flat keepsake. If the person you are buying for wants a box of objects to unpack, a food-and-gadget box will suit them better.
Three months, six months or twelve. Twelve is the whole story, from the first letter to the ending, because the series is twelve letters long and then it finishes.
No. No price, no invoice, no packing slip and no renewal notice will go in the envelope. The card carries your message and nothing else.
Yes. Your message will be printed on a card and travel in the first envelope, so it arrives in the post rather than in an inbox. The card itself is still being finalised, so we are not quoting a word limit we might have to change.
The United States, Canada and Europe, all posted from Ireland. Postage is included in the price and there is nothing to pay on arrival. If the person you are buying for lives outside those three, write to us and we will tell you honestly whether we can reach them.
It ends. A gift is a fixed number of months and it does not roll into a paid subscription on its own. Nobody is left having to cancel something they did not buy. If they want to carry on afterwards, that will be their choice to make.
No. The letters are about one bird a month and the life around it, written to be read in an armchair rather than in a hide. Anyone who likes birds, or likes a serial with somewhere to go, is who they are written for.
Every letter is folded, sealed and stamped by hand at one desk in Co. Louth, and ordering is not open yet. The waitlist is free, commits you to nothing, and hears everything first.
Tell us you are buying for someone else and the gift lengths are what you will hear about first.
Letter No. 0 is free to read in full, with its plate and its poem, before you decide anything.
