Our story
Thrush & Pine is for the people who stop.
Everyone who loves birds has a moment they can point to. A Red-tailed Hawk on a fence post at highway speed, and your foot already off the gas. A thrush singing somewhere in the pines at dusk while dinner goes cold. A heron in a roadside ditch you have driven past a thousand times, standing so still you almost missed it.
The name
A Wood Thrush in the pines behind the house
We started in Georgia, in the pines behind the house where a Wood Thrush sings on spring and summer evenings. It can sing two notes at once, one from each side of its voice box, which is why the song sounds like a flute with an echo inside it. If you have heard it at dusk, you know why the shop is named after it.
You may also know the other part
- 3 billion
- Breeding birds North America has lost since 1970, nearly.
- 1 in 4
- More than one bird in four, gone.
- Half
- About half of its own: what the Wood Thrush has lost.
The woods did not go quiet all at once. They went quiet one evening at a time, mostly when nobody was listening.
So we make things for the people who are listening.
One bird, right
Checked against the field guide before it goes anywhere
Every bird we put on a shirt, a cap, a mug or a print is checked against the field guide before it goes anywhere: today's official name, the right plumage, the marks a birder looks for first.
Field mark 01
The necklace on the loon.
Field mark 02
The red eye on the drake Wood Duck.
Field mark 03
The rust band on the female kingfisher.
The one where she is brighter than he is.
Made to order, properly
Nothing waits in a warehouse
Everything is made after you order it, on things we would wear on a count: heavyweight garment-dyed cotton, caps stitched in real thread, prints on heavy matte paper in a wood frame. Nothing waits in a warehouse.
The club
Where did you see yours?
What we hope you get from us isn't really a shirt. It's the moment a stranger at the trailhead, the airport gate or the school pickup line reads the bird on your chest and asks, "Where did you see yours?", and the two of you lose ten minutes.
That's the club. You were in it before you found us.
The one rule we never bend
If we ever get a field mark wrong, write to us.
We fix the design and make it right with you.
Questions, a field mark we got wrong, a species you want to see: hello@thrushandpine.com.