Patricia Wolf: The Secret Lives of Birds

The Portland composer and field recordist shares her bird-watching stories

In her inspiring book How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, writer Jenny Odell talks about taking up bird-watching as a practice to escape the digital world for periods of time.

After finishing the book, I spent many afternoons sitting in my garden, trying to identify bird species with an encyclopedia from the local library.

Bird-watching is one effective way to get away from our fractured online life, where our attention is hijacked by a new topic and a new piece of “content” every few seconds. Like a meditation, it requires mindful observation of analog reality. It grounds us in our natural surroundings, creating a deeper connection to the place where we dwell.

Patricia Wolf is a Portland, Oregon based ambient-slash-experimental musician – I’ve previously interviewed her for this newsletter – whose fascination for bird-watching began alongside her field recording practice.

Trying to identify the birds she recorded by their distinct songs, she started researching wildlife in her native Pacific Northwest region and getting involved with the protection and conservation of local birds.

Her newest album, The Secret Lives of Birds, is dedicated to these activities – musically, it’s a gorgeous body of work, a summery collage of birdsong and other field recordings, digital and analog synths and electronics.

Celebrating her album release, Patricia kindly offered to provide liner notes to the album and share some of her bird-watching stories.

Patricia Wolf field recording, photo: G Roberti

01 – The Secret Lives of Birds

My playful attempt at creating a birdsong-like melody and pattern with a synthesizer. It’s an amusing mindset to be in. There seems to be no limit to the sounds that birds can make.

Perhaps there is a bird that I’m not aware of that sings in similar timbres to those in my song. There are so many fascinating secrets in the bird world, things we are still discovering about them, and things we may never understand.

02 – The American Dipper

This aquatic songbird swims underwater in search of invertebrates among the rocks and rapids of a river. My song expresses the effort of this bird's wings against the currents, the stuttered, gradual movements propelled by wing strokes beneath the water’s surface – faster and slower – moving with or against the current as it chases after a tasty water bug.

This song is intentionally erratic and designed to make the listener hang on tight to the melody as if it is trying to throw you off like a powerful river current. It makes your mind latch on in an interesting, invigorating way – like a focusing exercise – which is what I imagine these birds experience on their unique hunting dives. 

03 – Rufous Hummingbird Dive Display

In my neighborhood, there’s a nature corridor called Baltimore Woods. The group caring for it is called Friends of Baltimore Woods. They have been removing invasive plants and planting native ones which wildlife rely on for food and reproduction.

While walking through the Baltimore Woods two springs ago I noticed a grove of Red Flowering Currants in bloom. Admiring the flowers, I suddenly heard an unusual sound. It sounded like the tiniest trumpet playing right above my head. I looked up at the source, and it was a hummingbird with a coppery gorget doing a dive display right in front of me. There must have been a female nearby that it was trying to impress.

I recorded the sound and ended up using it in this song, capturing the magic of this encounter. The sound of the dive display is not a vocalization, but a sound that is produced by its wing and tail feathers while performing the dive display.

I wanted to highlight this special bird because its population is in decline. One thing that people in the Americas can do to help these birds is to plant the native flowers that produce the nectar that they rely on. 

Starling mural, Reyjkjavik, Iceland

04 – Starling Murmuration 

These birds sometimes make spectacular group flight formations to evade predators. In the fall and winter, these birds form large flocks that roost together. They achieve safety in numbers by appearing as a large mass in the sky that morphs in unpredictable shapes and united movements; it confuses and intimidates birds of prey that may try to hunt them.

It fills me with wonder to witness this behavior in the sky. I wanted to illustrate how one can join many to creatively overcome the challenges of life. The song starts out in a minimal fashion and then becomes more complex over time, swooping in unexpected and fascinating ways. 

05 – Greylag Geese Through the Listening Sculpture at Tjörnin

In Reykjavík, Iceland, there’s a lake called Tjörnin where Greylag Geese, Whooper Swans, Black-headed Gulls, Herring Gulls, and many other water loving bird species can be found. While walking around the lake I came across a metal sound sculpture. I put my ear to the listening end and pointed the horn end towards a group of Greylag Geese who were honking and splashing and flapping their wings nearby.

I loved how the sound sculpture operated like a parabolic dish and microphone system. It focused and amplified the sound that the horn end was pointed to towards your ear and gave you a closer listen to whatever was in its path. It also gave the sound a tinny quality. I had a pair of in-ear binaural microphones with me so I put them in my ears and recorded the sound with one earbud’s microphone recording the sound from the sculpture and the other recording the unaffected sound in the open air. It was an interesting way to enjoy the soundscape there. I could hear the sounds of traffic, the people passing by, and of course the very active geese.

The field recording that you hear in this track is from that experience at Tjörnin. I decided to write a bit of music to accompany this recording to try to impart the sense of wonder and mystery that I felt at this sound sculpture. I wish that there were more listening sculptures in cities and parks. It’s such a wonderful thing to stop and focus on the sounds around us.

06 – Bewick's Wren 

A couple of years ago in early spring, I heard a complex birdsong coming from my backyard. I was just getting started as a birder, so my eyes and ears were always on alert for signs of birds, but many of the native species were still unknown to me. I quickly grabbed a recorder to document the song so I could try to identify which unseen species was singing. It turned out to be Bewick’s Wren.

Eventually I did see it. It’s a small brown bird with perky upturned tail feathers and a bold white stripe above each eye. This gives it the appearance of being defiant and mischievous. This was one of the earliest birds of the season that I noticed to be singing what I suppose is a courtship song. It seemed to tell me that spring is here and that the time of warmth and light is well on its way.

I wanted to write a song that felt like the earth was waking up. I wanted it to have the feeling of plants putting their energy to leaves and new growth, of bees coming out of hibernation, and of birds looking for a mate. 

07 – Golden-Crowned Sparrow

Just outside of my house, I noticed a beautiful song coming from the bushes in my yard. I was able to identify it as the Golden-Crowned Sparrow. There’s something sweet and plaintive about it that touches my heart. I wanted to write music that captured the feeling I get when I hear it singing. It seems to be gently professing its love to someone, unsure if it will be returned, but is carefully expressing each word with tenderness and respect.

08 – Mourning the Varied Thrush That Struck a Window and Died

One day, a beautiful Varied Thrush flew fast into one of my house’s windows and died shortly after. Unfortunately these sorts of deaths are common, but preventable. Birds are intelligent, but they cannot see glass. They see what is reflected in the glass and will fly full force into what they think is a safe place only to strike the hard surface. This often results in death or serious injury. I cried a lot over this event.

I had been seeing two pairs of Varied Thrushes in my yard regularly and felt lucky to be visited by such lovely birds. I grew accustomed to hearing their subtle calls each day. I enjoy watching their quick and dramatic movements, suddenly swooping with a heroic pose and then turning over fallen leaves looking for something to eat with such gusto.

After this tragic death, I ordered Acopian Bird Savers which are a vertical linear array of paracord spaced four inches apart that you hang on the outside of your windows to break up their reflections. This enables birds to see that there is a barrier, so they will avoid attempting to fly into it. Since installing them, there have not been any more window strikes.

I wanted to honor this bird and all of the birds that die from strikes with glass and other reflective surfaces. I hope to bring attention to this serious problem which kills about one billion birds in the United States each year. The field recording in this song was of the female bird of the pair, the survivor, calling out for her lost mate all day, but not getting a response. It was heartbreaking and motivated me to take action to make my home safer for birds. I hope that it can motivate others, too.

09 – Nocturnal Migration

Seasonal migrations of birds often happen at night. It’s impressive to me how birds are able to travel such great distances and know exactly where they need to go to find food and reproduce, especially in this ever-changing world where their habitats are shrinking more each day.

I wanted this song to convey the feeling of a focused and peaceful journey while bravely facing the elements and confidently orienting oneself by the earth’s magnetic field, finding one’s way with a celestial map.

10 – The Ptarmigan and the Gyrfalcon

While in Reykjavik last fall, I learned about a bit of Icelandic folklore. According to the tale, the Ptarmigan (a bird in the grouse family) and the Gyrfalcon (a bird of prey) are siblings, but one day Odin’s wife Frigg summons all the birds to meet. At this meeting she demands that all the birds show their fealty to her by walking through fire. All of the birds obey her, except for the Ptarmigan. This is the folk explanation as to why the Ptarmigan have feathers on their legs and feet and the other birds do not.

As a punishment to Ptarmigan for not proving her loyalty, Frigg curses her to be the most defenseless of birds and to be hunted for eternity. Even her brother, the Gyrfalcon, now hunts her. After killing her and realizing that she is his sister, he cries out in sorrow and regret, yet as part of the curse he can’t resist eating her.

It’s a tragic story and really stuck with me. It illustrates the painful realities of the web of life in a mystical kind of way.

11 – I Don’t Want to Live in a World Without Birds

This is one of my field recordings from Malheur Wildlife Refuge processed through the Neutone AI plugin tool that can transform an input sound source into a violin expression.

The motivation behind this was born out of the depressing thought of a world in the future where most or all wildlife has gone extinct and all that is left of them are archives of pictures, videos, and sounds, with some remaining species kept in zoos or private collections. The idea of birdsong and wildlife disappearing in the wild makes me incredibly sad. I think of people trying to fill in the gaps with artificial “nature” sounds or recordings of bird sounds to fill in the sonic space.

I don’t think this song quite demonstrates what that reality might sound like, but the idea of AI renderings of imaginary birdsongs, or artists trying to make birdsong-like music to relax to in an artificial nature was on my mind when I experimented with this tool.

Luckily, I still live in a world where I can hear and see real birds. If I were left with only recordings of birds or artificial versions of them, how unfathomably sad that would be, especially having the memory as a child of birdsong waking me up in the morning and now noticing them around me at all times of the day.

12 – Soaring 

I wanted to leave the album on a hopeful and positive note. I don’t know what the future will bring, but I do see efforts being made every day to right the wrongs that humans have inflicted on other species.

With this song I wanted to express my feeling that birds are a symbol of freedom and tenacity, which is one of the many reasons why we humans need them to live on this planet with us. I wanted to leave my listeners with a feeling that anything is possible and that we can let our knowledge and admiration for nature lift us to higher heights as a species and find ways to coexist in a shared future.

Patrica Wolf’s The Secret Lives of Birds is available digitally and on cassette.