now that the leafy “i” is more of a candle, and now that the chimeric bird is more bird-like and less a reflection of the leaf, i find that my brain keeps asking why that bird is attracted to a candle…
birds attracted to night lights make me think of window strikes, which is probably a bad thing…
but i think it might be fun if you guys ever decide to animate the logo to start with a moth attracted to the flame, and then have the bird swoop in and swallow the moth. the bird would swoop down and to the left (or maybe down, to the right, and towards the observer), capturing the moth, and then the bird would turn around and come back up and to the right. right as it gets into the proper position, you could animate a camera shutter effect, stopping the motion of the bird and fixing it to the left of the iNaturalist text.
(i thought about just a moth, but the logical placement for that kind of creature probably isn’t ideal.)
one more random thought: the leaf-flame on the old logo is positioned so that it looks like it could have been been spewn by the chimeric dragon-bird. in the new logo, it looks more like the bird is blowing out the flame. so i think i’m going to call the new bird Birthday Bird. 