Excellent Birds

[4] In an October 1983 interview with Philip Bell of Sounds magazine, Gabriel reiterated his interest in working with Anderson on a multimedia project utilising her music, visuals, and a "comical comedian to make it a humorous piece."

[13] Daniel Lanois and Manu Katché overdubbed a twelve-string guitar and talking drum respectively to augment the existing tracks.

[3] However, Gabriel did not include "This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)" on the original vinyl version of the album due to space limitations.

[18] When Gabriel was preparing his 25th anniversary edition of So, he decided to assemble snippets of demos from the original recording sessions and compile them into full songs to demonstrate the progression of their development.

Since the original recording sessions for "This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)" were completed in 48 hours, Gabriel had a limited amount of material available, but he nonetheless included a DNA version of the song on the 25th anniversary box set.

[6] Writing about the "Excellent Birds" recording on Anderson's Mister Heartbreak album, Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone said that "an eclectic pop consciousness" was ingrained in the song.

[19] Lennox Samuels of Dallas Morning News thought that the song demonstrated Gabriel's "funk inclinations and his rather African musical sensibility".

[21] Eric Harvey of Pitchfork believed that "Excellent Birds" had lyrical similarities to Anderson's work on her debut album Big Science.

[22] Annie Zaleski of Ultimate Classic Rock wrote that the song "boast[ed] a glassy art-funk underbelly and feathery Laurie Anderson vocal contributions.

"[23] Writing for Uncut, John Lewis characterised "This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)" as a series of "jerky abstractions in search of a song" that felt out of place on So.

[8] During live performances from this tour, Gabriel would preface the song by providing introductions of the band, starting with David Rhodes and ending with Tony Levin.