Like many birdwatchers, my attention is often drawn to the rare and the colourful. The occasionally seen migratory species in all their breeding plumage glory engender much more excitement than the year round little brown birds - which on closer examination have every bit as much character.

This piece celebrates one of the common birds of the Pacific Northwest, the Song Sparrow, which makes up for what it lacks in visual appeal with a dazzling repertoire of up to twenty distinct song variations. On the iridescent portion of the feather I’ve carved a song’s spectrogram, which you may recognize if you’ve ever used the Merlin app: a visual representation of pitch and volume over time. The title is a play on the phenomenon of blended sensory perceptions, where one stimulus (sound) triggers an in experience in another - colour and shape.

This shadowbox is made with legal-to-own feathers on archival cotton papers, and framed in a black lacquered wood frame with museum acrylic, ready to hang and display.