Spring Soundtrack

Patagon Thrush

On my 13th birthday, my granddad gave me a handheld voice recorder I had been asking for over the past couple of years. I wanted a specific model that used full-size tapes, so anything I recorded could be played back on the stereo. As soon as I got it, I started documenting my family—secretly recording my siblings, parents, and grandparents—trying to capture funny moments that we would later listen to and laugh about together.

While listening back to some of these recordings, I noticed a constant, repeating melody in the background. At times it got in the way of what I was trying to capture, but once I realised it was simply part of my everyday soundscape, it became something soothing—a way to focus and find a bit of calm during a period of my life when depression was taking hold.

I started experimenting with it, playing the recordings out loud to see if the bird would show itself. And in a way, it worked. The bird seemed confused at first, as if it were responding to a conversation that didn’t quite make sense. After a while, it did approach and reveal itself, leaving its position among the dense branches. It was much bigger than I had imagined, and its bright yellow beak looked almost out of place against its otherwise unremarkable body.

The experiment worked: the birds began to appear when I played the tapes in the yard, though they quickly lost interest, as if they understood what I was doing, and returned to the higher branches where they were harder to see. Still, having those recordings meant I could carry their song with me anywhere. And I did—listening on the bus through my Walkman, at school on difficult days, or in bed when I couldn’t sleep through the crying.

Their song helped me focus, to quiet my mind from the darker thoughts that kept coming. I can’t say it was the only thing that helped, but today, whenever I hear a thrush sing, it takes me back to that spring and summer when I began, slowly, to feel better.

Dimensions: 25×25 CM