# Your face: initials, a photo or a bird

Pick how your team sees you, as initials, a photo or a bird you make. Clients see your bird only if you choose to show it.

Getting started · Updated October 19, 2026 · https://userookery.com/help/your-face/

A rookery is a colony of rooks, so everyone on your team can have a bird of their own. Your face shows wherever Rookery shows who you are: on what you're assigned, your notes, mentions, the drafts you're writing and the messages you send. Initials stay the default, and nobody has to make anything.

## Pick your face

1. Go to **Settings**, then **Your account**.
2. Under **Your face**, click **Initials**, **Photo** or **Bird**. It saves as soon as you click.

Switching never deletes anything. Pick **Initials** and your bird and photo are still there for when you switch back. For a photo, see [Add your photo](https://userookery.com/help/profile-photos/).

## Make your bird

Click **Bird** (or press Space on it), or **Change your bird** once you have one. **Make your bird** opens. With the arrow keys, moving onto a choice doesn't use it yet: press Space or Enter.

1. Choose from the tabs: **Feathers** (the colour and the crest), **Face** (eyes, expression and glasses), **Outfit** (on top, the outfit and its colour), **Badge** and **Background**.
2. Watch the preview: your bird at every size Rookery draws it, on light and dark, and next to Rook.
3. Click **Use this bird**.

**Surprise me** makes a whole bird for you. **Undo** and **Redo** go back and forward through your last 50 changes; ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z on Windows) do the same. **Cancel** leaves your saved bird as it was.

With a keyboard, Tab moves between the groups and the arrow keys move within one. The preview's description says what your bird looks like, for screen readers. If you've asked your device for less motion, the preview stays still.

## Who sees your bird

- **Your team**, everywhere your face shows in Rookery.
- **Clients**, only if you turn on **Show my bird on my booking page and client pages**. It's off to start with, and it's yours alone: nobody can turn it on for you. While it's off, clients see your photo if you have one, or your initials. If you switch to **Photo** or **Initials**, Rookery remembers how you left it for when you pick **Bird** again.
- **Email** never carries your face. Nothing in the emails you send links to it or attaches it.

## Your bird and Rook

Rook keeps its own face, the green square in profile, so you can always tell Rook's work from a person's. Birds people make are round, face you and sit in a circle, and they never use Rook's green or its marigold beak. Those colours aren't in the creator at all.

Your bird is saved as a short list of the choices you made, not as a picture, so there's nothing to upload and it shows at once.