You as a Curve-billed Thrasher, or Why I Chose This Bird for My American Communication Studio Logo

This summer, while I was working on my website for American Communication Studio, I would go outside in the morning and again in the evening, and I would hear the same bird. It was not the birds I had grown accustomed to hearing on those summer nights. This bird sat perched at the very top of the pecan tree directly across the street, with a voice so loud and strong that I could hardly listen to anything else.

Night after night and morning after morning, it continued; I would walk outside and the bird would sing, as if to me, very intently.

I wanted to know what was this bird, so I opened the Merlin app on my phone, which identified it as a curve-billed thrasher. By then, though, I already knew something else: this bird was going to be the symbol for my communication business. I needed its name.

This bird had confidence. It would sing and sing, and when I walked closer to the tree to look at it, it sang some more. Other birds would have flown away as I approached, but this one remained, continuing as though it had something to say. 

I thought about my clients and students, about the people who come to me wanting to sound better and to feel more confident when they speak. Here was a bird with a beautiful voice, with melodies that seemed to change as I listened, and with the confidence to send that voice out into the sky.  This bird, the curve billed thrasher, embodies why my clients strive for, even what I still strive for, what we all should strive to have: a clear voice, meaningful iterations, and a presence that attracts listeners.  

The curve billed thrasher is not a spectacularly colorful bird. Its appearance is rather plain compared to more colorful birds. Looking at it, you might not expect the voice that comes from it. Then it sings, and you understand why you have stopped to listen.

I could have chosen another bird for the logo. There are other birds around my house that I enjoy watching and hearing, but for this particular purpose, there was no competition. The thrasher had already become the image of what I wanted American Communication Studio to mean.

Even now, when I go outside, the first thing I listen for is the thrasher. I know its voice when I hear it; it does not sound like any of the other birds.

And I think of my clients, and of myself, because I work on my voice, too. There is always something we can develop: our pitch, our rhythm, our vocabulary, the way we put our words together. However well we speak, we can continue working toward the best voice we can have, and toward the confidence to use it.

That is how the curve-billed thrasher became my logo bird: by being there, morning and evening, at the top of the pecan tree, with its beautiful voice and its apparent certainty that it should be heard.