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Spark Bird: J’orge Garcia and the Finch Robot
In Chicago, this maker-turned-birder invents new technology for bird conservation.
© Majoahalo (left); Becky Matsurbara (right)
J’orge Garcia loves making things. For several years at the Chicago Public Library, he helped people to design and build their own creations with educational tools like the Finch Robot. With basic coding skills, J’orge and his students could program the little, bird-shaped bot to sing, light up, or drive along a path. The experience inspired him to look for finches in his own neighborhood. On Bring Birds Back, J’orge shares how his passion for technology and nature led him to found the Windy City Bird Lab, a community-science group that’s inventing new tools to study urban birds.
BirdNote®
Spark Bird: J’orge Garcia and the Finch Robot
Written by Ariana Remmel
This is BirdNote.
J’orge Garcia loves making things. For several years, he worked at the Chicago Public Library Maker Lab helping people learn to build their own creations.
J’orge Garcia: When I got curious about birds, it was around technology at first. There was this tool that I used called the Finch Robot. With the Finch Robot, I was teaching teachers how to teach kids how to code.
J’orge could program the little, bird-shaped bot to sing, light up, or drive along a path. And that got him thinking about a new kind of challenge.
J’orge Garcia: I knew that a finch was a bird, but I didn't know what kind of bird it was. And so I got curious to know if I could find a finch around my neighborhood.
[House Finch]
J’orge did indeed find finches — as well as a welcoming community of bird enthusiasts.
[Urban bird ambi from Chicago]
J’orge Garcia: It was around this time too in the pandemic that I was thinking about how I could use my skills in helping people make things and create a space where people can explore how they can promote healthier environments and and richer biodiversity.
Today, that space is the Windy City Bird Lab, a community-science group he founded that’s inventing new tools to study urban birds.
J’orge Garcia: At our core, our mission is to bring awareness to birds in Chicago using technology, but also bringing together these folks with different skill sets to create new ways of advocating for birds.
Learn more about J’orge’s new tech creations for bird conservation in season 8 of Bring Birds Back, available in your favorite podcast app. For BirdNote, I’m Mark Bramhill.
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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Producer: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Ariana Remmel
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. House Finch ML56843 recorded by GA Keller.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2026 BirdNote January 2026
Narrator: Mark Bramhill
ID# PodBBB-45-2026-01-08 PodBBB-45
Reference:
https://learn.birdbraintechnologies.com/finch/activities/
Mark Bramhill
Narrator