Ruddy Turnstone

Ruddy Turnstone (2021)

Duration: approx. 9 minutes

Difficulty- Advanced

Ruddy Turnstone is a musical representation of the arenaria interpres, or Ruddy Turnstone, a migratory shorebird I observed at the Adelaide International Bird Sanctuary in 2021. The initial appeal came from a comment made by a bird watcher: “Where does the name come from? Well, they’re ruddy (red) coloured, and they turn stones!” How delightfully droll, sweet and plainly beautiful, I thought- to call something exactly what it is, and yet make a kind of poetry along the way. As I explored further, I came to see this bird as representative of so much of what I found beautiful and moving about the bird sanctuary. Here is a plain, stocky, and unremarkable-looking bird, busily upturning thousands of beach pebbles as it forages along the shoreline, preparing for a 10,000 km flight home. 

The music is built around some aspects of the Ruddy Turnstone’s call- certain flicks, dissonances, rapid rhythmic patterns and guttural chirping sounds. Moving beyond imitation, the music unfolds in the way of an etude, creating extended musical themes from a fragmentary introduction.