Trace the Sky is about one of my life’s most enduring loves: birding. When I was a kid, I would voraciously sift through field guides as if they were novels, constantly studying the pages in an attempt to soak up all the information my eager mind could. My interest would wane somewhat with age, but in the last few years I have rekindled my passion for birding with full force. So, in the long compositional tradition of writing odes to birds and birdsong, I felt it was high time I made my own contribution.

I wrote this piece during the COVID-19 pandemic, where, confined to my family home in the San Francisco Bay Area after years of living in New York, one of my only recreational outlets was birding. I was fortunate to be in a suburb teeming with wildlife, and no shortage of birds. As time passed and the seasons changed, the birds would change with them, and I took great joy in noticing the flow of time around me reflected in the changing avian life.

This piece is very personal to me not only because of my passion for birds, but because it is to date my most hopeful work. Birds are, of course, each unique in their own intrinsic qualities, but they also represent powerful archetypes that can shed light on our own human personalities. Each of the birds I chose to write about are species that I consider emblematic of my hometown, ones with distinct personalities worthy of music—an aural aviary, if you will. Most of the movements contain stylized imitations of each bird’s call. Above all, I hope listeners take home the message that, as the first movement states, “No matter how you take to the feather, we can face it all together.”

Movement Synopses/Bird Guide:

1. Trace the Sky: Perhaps the most self-explanatory, this movement represents my inner monologue as I birded my way through quarantine. It is at once both a call to look to nature for inspiration, and a call for humanity to enter a new age of community and collaboration. The line about the world being engulfed in flames is quite literal: I spent two months largely unable to leave my home due to smoke from the California wildfires.

2. Wrentit: The oddly named Wrentit, known for its visual similarity to both wrens and tits despite being related to neither (isn’t birding fun?), is a bird heard calling from every hill in my hometown. However, due to its tendency to forage close to the ground, it is seldom seen.

3. Red-tailed Hawk: There are few raptor species in my town, but the species at the clear top of the hierarchy is the Red-tailed Hawk. I have noticed an uptick in the local raptor population in recent years, which is a good barometer for the health of the local ecosystem: they indeed do “extinguish lives so others may thrive”.

4. California Quail: The state bird of California, these plucky game fowl are often seen in groups with one male perched at a higher vantage point than all the others, keeping watch over the hens and chicks. Inevitably, when approached, they quickly scatter, usually preferring to scurry off into the bushes, or if you’re lucky, pitifully attempting to fly into the trees. A delightful sight.

5. Steller’s Jay: These cerulean corvids carry themselves with the posture of a jester, flying in a strange, gliding pattern and hopping about without a care once on the ground. They are known for their aggressive attitude towards smaller birds, and their talent at imitating hawks. Alas, their primary call is a god-awful shriek any metal frontman would die for.

6. Heermann’s Gull: This gull species has timed its migration pattern to align precisely with that of the Brown Pelican. As they move northward from their breeding grounds in Western Mexico, they stalk the pelicans and other seabirds in the hopes that they’ll drop their catches, often going so far as to snatch fish right out of a pelican’s gullet (isn’t birding fun?).

7. Common Raven: Despite hilariously being classified as North America’s largest songbird, there is nothing sing-song about the Common Raven’s intimidating stature. At one of my town’s beaches, there is a flock of unnervingly large ravens that nest in the cypress trees. I like to imagine that they hold ancient, untold knowledge, and that they, like the twin ravens of the Norse god Odin, are the cold overseers of a transient world.

8. Beyond the Veil: I’ve often described birding to friends as “real-life Pokémon Go”. Like an augmented reality game, it forces you to venture outside to participate in an activity that operates as a layer superimposed onto our daily lives. Most people have zero awareness of any of the non-human life around them, let alone birds. But birding, as a practice, forces one to acquire new ways of seeing. It is, to me, both an incredible ludic experience and mindfulness practice wrapped into one. In Norse cosmology, there are a total of nine realms featuring all manner of lifeforms from humans, to gods, to Giants, and more. Depending on the depiction, these realms are not neighboring countries or planets, but exist superimposed upon each other, occupying the same space but in different dimensions.