Birds Speak Everyday
Ka Kōrero Māori Ngā Manu

A friend said that in Aotearoa New Zeland all birds speak in Māori, and this observation made an impact on me.

I asked some Māori speaker friends for how they would write these bird calls. Each language has its own way of expressing sounds of the natural world and this painting also refers to the proverb in praise of diversity:
E koekoe te tūī, e ketekete te kākā, e kūkū te kererū /
The tui warbles, the kaka cackles, the pigeon coos, meaning it takes all sorts or that diversity is what makes the world work.
Most of these birds used to live in our forested and wetland backyard, which recently was denuded by a neighbour here in small town, Kawakawa, Northland, and it was missing the sounds of these birds (The owl, the wood pigeon, fantail, tui and kingfisher are based on photographs I had taken in these trees), that was the starting point of this painting about the value for diverse voices, here birdsong, even if in a language we do not understand.