Ornithomancy is a form of divination: a practice of reading omens through birds — their movements, their actions and their calls. It appears across a variety of cultures, from ancient Greece, where birds were understood as messengers offering guidance on decisions and uncertain futures, all the way to north-east England circa 2002, where my dad taught me to always salute a solo magpie to avoid the wrath of its bad luck. Similar systems, same impulse: to look outwards when you feel unsure, when something feels unknowable.

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Ornithomancy (2023+) is an ongoing research project exploring this impulse through artist books, zines, printed objects, writing, birdwatching and experiments with divination. Each iteration offers a different way of asking birds for guidance. 

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The project is also rooted in recovery, and in developing a disabled methodology for making and researching. Birdwatching has become a way of paying attention to the world beyond myself: a practice that can accommodate slowness, repetition, fluctuating energy and changing capacity. Rather than working towards a fixed outcome, the project allows research to unfold through looking, listening, returning and noticing.​ Together, these works form part of a longer investigation into folklore, queer ecology, recovery, disability and the human desire to find meaning in the more-than-human world.