Our Story

Everyone has a spark bird

A spark bird is the one that got you. Not the rarest bird you've ever seen, and not the one at the top of your list — the first one that made you stop, and look, and then keep looking for the rest of your life.

For a lot of people it's a cardinal at the kitchen window on an ordinary Tuesday. For some it's a bird they couldn't name for years. Ours was the cardinal. That's why he's in the logo.

Where this happens

We're in Abington, PA AKA Bird Town Pennsylvania. That's a real designation, not something we invented: Audubon Pennsylvania gives it to municipalities that manage their parks, streets and yards with birds in mind. We didn't move here for that, but it hasn't hurt.

It's ordinary suburban Pennsylvania. Oaks and maples, low stone walls, a creek, feeders in half the yards on the block. There's a chickadee at the window most mornings and a red-tailed hawk who has strong opinions about one particular telephone pole, and once you start noticing that sort of thing, you don't really stop.

That's the honest version of who we are. We're a small family that got hooked and never got unhooked, and every shirt here comes out of that.

Why we make shirts

We started Spark Bird Society for one particular minute: the quiet golden one at dawn, before the day really starts, when the first bird sings and it feels a little like it's singing to you.

You can't frame a minute. So we put it on a shirt instead.

Most of what we make is built on the way birders actually talk — songs turned into sentences you can't un-hear, and words that mean nothing at the office and everything at the trailhead. If you know, you know. If you don't, it's a nice shirt with a bird on it. Both are fine.

What we're building

We're new. The catalog is small on purpose, and it grows from requests: tell us your spark bird and we'll add it to the list. We can't promise every species, but we read every note. Tell us yours.

It's not a competition. (It's absolutely a competition.)