Sleepy Bird Sanctuary is a fictional place. This site is a design concept by Orange Fin Agency.
The forest got in through the roof.
A palm house was abandoned in 1974 and a canopy grew inside it. We keep the roof on, and every afternoon the birds put themselves to sleep.
A day here has four parts
The birds set the schedule and we work around it. Each session is a different building.
Dawn Chorus
06:45 to 09:00 · 90 places
The loudest ninety minutes of the day, and the coldest. Bring a coat, the heating does not come up until seven.
Bloom Hours
09:30 to 13:30 · 240 places
Full light through the roof, everything feeding, everything moving. The session to bring children to.
The Drowse
14:00 to 15:30 · 40 places
The birds sleep and so does the room. No talking, no phones, no photography. People come back for this one.
Ages 12 and over
Lantern Hours
18:30 to 21:00 · 120 places
Amber light under 2200 kelvin, low and shielded, because anything brighter or whiter would keep the roost awake. It is the strangest way to see the place.
May to September
Nobody planted this
Between 1981 and 2009 the glasshouse was open to the sky through a broken pane, and it filled itself. When we took the lease we intended to clear it out. We spent one winter in there and changed our minds.
We are still not sure how they do it
A population of forty birds enters torpor inside a twenty minute window with no obvious signal passing between them. Four studies run here, and none of them have answered that yet.
Sessions release on the first of each month
Dawn and Drowse sessions are small and usually go first. Under fours come in free on any session except the Drowse.
Sleepy Bird Sanctuary is not a real place
It is a working concept built by Orange Fin Agency to show what we make for venues that sell timed entry. Everything on this site is real work. The only thing that does not happen is the payment, because there is nothing to pay for.