Who needs an obnoxious alarm when you can create a legit bird symphony to help you welcome the day? Our “App of the Week” is Dawn Chorus, the refreshing wake-up call you never knew you needed.
Among the numerous dubious fictions fed to us by Disney movie princesses, chief among them is that waking up in the morning simply requires a graceful stretch of the arms and a demure fluttering of the eyelids. LIES. This dog is living her truth, at least.
What they do get right, however, is that waking up to birdsong is really goddamn pleasant. While some may be lucky enough to live in a place where feathered friends do their chirping business outside their windows circa sunrise each morning, the rest of us are left to welcome the day with obnoxious alarm sounds that, in hindsight, seems a bit masochistic.
Seriously, who thought making the irritating act of waking up more irritating was the way to go? Lucky for us all, the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh launched the Dawn Chorus app earlier this year, wherein users can take recordings of actual birds and create a custom cacophony to wake up to.
Here’s how it works: After setting your desired wake-up time, you select up to five birds out of a library of 20, and their songs are laid over one another one at a time after your designated time, mimicking the actual “dawn choruses” that occur in nature.
Another way to think of it? You’re DJ Mother Nature creating a custom mashup of your fave chirps and tweets so that waking up sucks a lot less. And what’s more, you’ve got a technological edge over the real thing: If you’re not ready to wake up, you can “shake the tree,” so to speak (I.e. shake your phone) to snooze for a little longer.
And because this is an app created in partnership with a museum, you can learnstuff too. Really into what that Brown Creeper adds to your morning? Pull up its info card to find out more. As the museum website points out, in addition to providing a more peaceful way for people to wake up, the app aims to have users “better understand the importance of conservation efforts.”
All in all, a good plan for reconnecting with nature and set you on the path to feeling more like this in the morning:
Download the Dawn Chorus app in the App Store for free.
