✦ An AI Like a Girl initiative

brAInstorm
Chapter 1: The Flock

Every bird is a clue. Every walk is a quest. You in?

I'm Trisha, I'm 10, and I'm obsessed with birds. This camp is 4 days of birding adventures, AI experiments, and building cool stuff — come join the flock!

Join the Flock → See the 4-Day Quest
When
Oct 9–12, 2026
Columbus Day weekend · LISD holiday
Time
Fri–Sun: 9:30 AM–12 PM
Mon: 3:30–6 PM
Where
Bella Mar, Steiner Ranch
Ages
9+
✏️ Hey kids! This page is for YOU too. Read it with your parents — or on your own 😊 — Trisha
What We're About

Birds. Nature. AI.
The ultimate adventure.

We're going outside to find real birds, figuring out how AI can identify them by sound and sight, and then building our own projects. It's like a treasure quest meets science meets making cool things.

🐦
The Quest

We're not sitting in a classroom. We're going OUTSIDE with binoculars and tracking down birds. Every species you spot is like finding hidden treasure — seriously, once you start looking, you can't stop.

🤖
Crack the Code

AI can identify birds just from a recording of their song. We're going to figure out how that works — and then build our own AI that recognizes birds too.

🌍
Quests That Matter

Did you know 3 billion birds have disappeared since 1970? That's not okay. We're going to dig into why it's happening — window strikes, light pollution, habitat loss — and figure out what we can actually do about it.

🎮
Build Your Loot

You'll train your own bird ID model and design a game inspired by Angry Birds (but with a conservation twist!). By the end, you'll have something real to show off. That's your loot from the quest.

✦ For Your Family

Everything Your Family Needs to Know

Here's everything your family needs to know — I put it all in one place so it's easy!

👧
Ages
Ages 9+
💰
Price
$200 per camper
📍
Location
Bella Mar, Steiner Ranch, Austin TX
📅
Dates
Oct 9–12, 2026
Fri–Mon · Columbus Day weekend · Leander ISD holiday
⏰
Time
Fri–Sun: 9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Mon: 3:30 – 6:00 PM
🍎
Snacks
We provide fruits and fruit bars for everyone. Two snack breaks per session.
🎒
What to Bring
A charged laptop (essential for AI sessions), binoculars (any kind works!), a water bottle, and comfortable outdoor shoes.
🛡️
Safety
Trisha's mom and dad will both be present throughout the camp. Field trips stay within the Steiner Ranch area.
🧑‍🏫
Who's Running It
Run by Trisha Bhatia (age 10) and her mom Nimisha, founder of AI Like a Girl. Both parents will be present throughout.
✦ The Agenda

4-Day Quest

Here's what we're doing each day — trust me, it gets better and better.

Day
1
Fri · Oct 9
9:30 AM–12 PM
#OptOutside 🐦
▸Meet the Flock & Gear Up — I'm Trisha and I'll be leading this. We'll get to know each other, learn what to look for, and cover the basics of birding.
▸First Expedition — binoculars up! We head outside to find birds and see how many species we can spot on our first day.
▸Unlock Merlin — this app listens to birds singing and identifies them in real time. We'll try it out and learn how the AI behind it works.
Day
2
Sat · Oct 10
9:30 AM–12 PM
Into the Wild 🔭
▸The Big Expedition — we go further this time, sharpen our spotting skills, and take photos for our AI project.
▸Citizen Science & eBird — regular people can log bird sightings and scientists actually use that data for real research. We're joining that network.
▸Intro to Teachable Machine — Google's Teachable Machine lets you train AI to recognize things. We're going to use it to build our own bird identifier.
Day
3
Sun · Oct 11
9:30 AM–12 PM
Craft Your Treasure 🛠️
▸Train Your Model — remember those photos from our field trips? Now we feed them into Teachable Machine and train it to recognize the birds we found.
▸Game Design — we're making our own Angry Birds-style game but with a twist — yours will be about saving birds, not launching them! Or dream up your own bird-themed game, and we'll make it happen. It's going to be awesome.
▸Conservation Deep Dive — pick a real problem that birds are dealing with and investigate it. What does the data say? What would YOU do to fix it?
▸Bring Birds to Your Backyard — simple tips to invite birds home. Our backyard now gets regular visits from titmice, Carolina wrens, cardinals, hummingbirds, goldfinches, and house finches — yours can too.
Day
4
Mon · Oct 12
3:30–6 PM
🎉 Demo Day! 🎉
▸Final Polish — finish your AI model, your game, or your conservation project. Make it something you're really proud of.
▸Demo Day! — this is THE moment. You show the whole flock what you built. Four days of exploring, building, and figuring stuff out — and now everyone gets to see it.
▸Reflect — what did you discover about birds? About AI? About what YOU can do? This quest doesn't end here. It's just the beginning.
Never birded before?

Why Birds Are Cooler Than You Think

Okay I know what you're thinking. "Birds? Seriously?" Just read this. I dare you.

Bird art by Trisha

Real-Life Pokémon. Not Kidding.

You collect sightings, build a life list (basically a Pokédex), and some species are SO rare. There are apps that listen to bird songs and tell you exactly who's singing — like a real-life scanner.

Bird art by Trisha

Birds Are Low-Key Insane

Peregrine Falcons dive at 240 mph. Arctic Terns fly 44,000 miles a year. Crows recognize your face and hold grudges for YEARS. And in October? Millions of birds fly over Austin at night. You just can't see them. HOW IS THAT NOT WILD?!

Bird art by Trisha

No GPS. No Maps. No Problem.

Birds navigate using the Earth's magnetic field and the stars. Some fly across entire continents and come back to the exact same tree every year. Scientists still don't fully get how. Like… WHAT.

Bird art by Trisha

The Most Amazing Builders Ever

Weaverbirds make perfect hanging nests. Bowerbirds build decorated stages and sort objects by color to impress each other. Hummingbirds use SPIDER SILK so their nests stretch as the babies grow. No tools. No instructions. If you love crafting, birds are your people.

Bird art by Trisha

It Makes Every Place Better

Nobody told me this before I started: birding is SO calming. You slow down, you listen, you notice things nobody else sees. And it works everywhere — your backyard, a park, vacation, anywhere. Once you start, you literally can't stop noticing birds.

Bird art by Trisha

Instant Friends Wherever You Go

Birders are the friendliest people. Show up at any park with binoculars and someone will want to show you what they spotted. It's one of those things where you make friends SO fast because everyone's excited about the same stuff.

You don't need to know ANYTHING about birds to join.

Just bring curiosity. By day 4, you'll never look at a tree the same way again.

I'm in → Join the Flock
✦ Birds in Trouble

Something Is Happening to the Birds

Since 1970, North America has lost almost 3 BILLION birds. That number is insane. Here are some of the reasons why — and these are the kinds of things we'll investigate at camp.

🪟
Window Strikes

Up to 1 billion birds die every year just from flying into windows. They literally can't see glass. And most of it happens at regular houses, not skyscrapers! The fix is actually pretty simple — special stickers and films that birds can see. But most people don't even know this is a problem.

💡
Light Pollution

You know how bugs fly toward lights? Birds do something similar when they migrate at night — bright city lights pull them off course and into buildings. During October (when our camp runs!), millions of birds fly over Austin at night. Just turning off extra lights can literally save birds' lives.

🏗️
Habitat Loss

Austin keeps growing, which is cool, but the forests and wetlands that birds need for resting and eating during migration are getting smaller and smaller. When birds fly thousands of miles and there's nowhere to stop... that's a huge problem.

📉
Declining Populations

Grassland birds have dropped by 53%. Shorebirds by over a third. These numbers come from real data — and tools like eBird help track where birds are disappearing. That's actually something WE can help with, just by going out and logging what we see.

🐱
Cats & Invasive Species

This one shocked me: outdoor cats kill about 2.4 BILLION birds a year in the U.S. And invasive species like European starlings take over nesting spots that native birds need. Once you know this stuff, you start seeing the problems everywhere.

What will you discover?

You don't have to be a climate hero to care about this. Just knowing what's happening is a huge first step. And honestly, birding changes how you see everything — it teaches you to observe, to be patient, to notice things other people walk right past. Once you start, every park, every vacation, every backyard becomes way more interesting. That's the real treasure.

"We level up from witnesses to heroes by not only staring at problems but solving them."

Who's Running It

Meet the Founder

One kid with a big idea — backed by AI Like a Girl.

Trisha Bhatia
Trisha Bhatia
Age 10
The founder of brAInstorm and a passionate birder — Trisha is the one who dreamed this camp into existence. She's musical, artistic, math-wired, and deeply passionate about nature and sustainability. When she's not birding, she loves reading, making art, playing games, and acting. brAInstorm Chapter 1: The Flock brings together two of her biggest passions: birds and AI.

🐦 Birding: Trisha introduced her whole family to birding. She keeps a life list, has taken dedicated birding trips to Costa Rica, and is an avid follower of David Sibley — his bird art is a constant source of inspiration for her own drawings.

🤖 AI: This entire website? Trisha's vision and Trisha's work. From the design to the content to the quest plan — she built it all, with only the payment setup needing a little help from her mom.

Our Mascot

Meet the Mascot

Every flock needs a mascot! Ours represents everything we're about — curiosity, courage, and going on adventures together.

What flock members promise: look closely, ask big questions, and build something that matters.

Just like a real flock, we're all different — and that's the whole point. The rainbow colors are for every kind of thinker. It takes all of us together to solve the big stuff.

Problem Solvers Club Mascot
✦ The Origin Story

How This Started

"

So my mom runs this AI camp for girls called AI Like a Girl. I watched her build the whole thing from scratch, and one day I was like... wait, I could do this too.

I made a slide deck and started telling people about my idea — a camp where kids don't just talk about problems, we actually DO something about them. My friends Ananya and Naomi were in my AI Like a Girl camp, and the three of us built the first version of this website together. That's actually how brAInstorm started — as a team project at camp that turned into a real thing.

I've always been like that. When I see something that's not right, I can't just sit there. And here's the thing — I'm also really into birds. Like, I go birding in the mornings with binoculars, I know bird calls, I get excited when I spot a new species. So when I was picking a theme for the first brAInstorm camp, it was obvious. Birds!

October in Austin is PERFECT because that's when fall migration happens — hundreds of species fly right through central Texas. So The Flock was born: we go outside and find birds, then we come back and learn how the AI behind bird identification actually works. It's the best of both worlds.

I'm leading the whole camp with my mom helping out. She knows the AI stuff really well from running AI Like a Girl, and I know the birds. Together we've got it covered.

What started as me thinking "I could do that" turned into something real. brAInstorm hasn't just grown. It's taken flight. 🐦

Want In?

Join the Flock!

Fill this out and we'll get you set up! After you submit, you'll go to a payment page to finish registration.

🐦 $200 Ages 9+ October 9–12, 2026
✦ Your World

We weave kids' interests into the experience. Tell us what lights them up — it helps us make the camp feel personal.

🐦

You're In the Flock!

Welcome to brAInstorm Chapter 1: The Flock

YESSS! I'm so excited you're joining!! 🐦✨

You'll get a confirmation email at the address you signed up with. Keep an eye out for it — it'll have everything you need to know before Day 1.

Before you go, don't forget:

🔭 Grab your binoculars (any kind!)
💻 Make sure your laptop is charged
👟 Comfy outdoor shoes
🧃 Water bottle

See you October 9th at Bella Mar, Steiner Ranch. The quest starts soon! 🌿

— Trisha 🐦