  Electrons in a quantum Hall fluid can bind with an integer number of vortices
to form composite fermions and composite bosons. We show that the quantum Hall
bilayer at filling $\nu=\frac{1}{4}+\frac{3}{4}$ with interlayer separation $d$
can be well-described in terms of these composite particles. At small $d$ the
system can be understood as interlayer paired electrons and holes, whereas at
large $d$ the system is best understood in terms of composite fermions with
four vortices attached to each electron. By computing the overlaps of trial
wavefunctions with the ground state from exact diagonalization, we find that as
$d$ increases, the number of vortices that attach to each electron increases.
We also construct trial states for two types of excitation, the Goldstone mode
and a meron excitation. These two trial states have good overlaps with the
lowest excited states in the exact diagonalization spectrum for small and
intermediate $d$ respectively.
