Dark-eyed Junco and Blue-winged Warbler by Cern

Listen to the birds in this mural!

Painted: 10/26/2025

About the Mural: In this mural by artist Cern, a Dark-eyed Junco and Blue-winged Warbler perch amid a landscape blooming with native plants: black-eyed Susan, woodland sunflower, swamp milkweed, highbush blueberry, and foxglove beardtongue. As part of the Audubon Mural Project—a public-art initiative drawing attention to birds that are vulnerable to extinction from climate change—NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program and NYC Parks GreenThumb worked with the National Audubon Society, Gitler &_____ Gallery, and local artists to design murals in community gardens across the city. Through a collaborative process between the partners, artist, and garden group, each mural was designed to feature climate-threatened birds as well as native plants that birds depend on for food and shelter. By creating vibrant urban green spaces, community gardeners provide essential support for birds and people. Explore more murals from the collaboration here.

This mural was created with Paradise Community Garden, a family-friendly green space in the heart of South Jamaica, Queens. Artist Cern says painting in the garden was a soothing experience—getting to know the garden members, sampling the fresh beans and tomatoes, and spending time in nature. “To me it really was like a paradise, an oasis,” he says.

About the Birds: The Dark-eyed Junco is a familiar sight on forest floors and suburban yards, especially in winter, when flocks of the birds fan out across the continent. Their crisp plumage comes in different color variants across its range: Eastern variants are a slate gray with a white breast, but in the West, these birds may come with reddish-brown patches across various parts of the body. Meanwhile, the Blue-winged Warbler is a brightly colored bird whose buzzy call rings out from Eastern fields and thickets in summer. The birds, with their bright yellow bodies and blue-gray wings, hang from branches as they probe for bugs in curled-up leaves.

Populations of both birds seem to be holding up well; the Blue-winged Warbler may even be expanding its range northward. But climate change poses a looming threat. If warming continues at its current pace, both birds are projected to lose large swaths of their current summer ranges: 52 percent for the Dark-eyed Junco and 83 percent for the Blue-winged Warbler, according to Audubon’s Survival By Degrees report. Taking action to limit climate change can help these species thrive on a wider range of habitats in the future. Maintaining pockets of green space like community gardens—and filling them with native plants—can also provide birds with essential places to rest and refuel.

About the Artist: Cern is a multimedia artist and musician born and raised in New York City. After getting his start writing graffiti in the early ’90s, he’s continued to develop as a visual artist, and has painted murals throughout South America, Europe, and South Africa. He’s long been interested in nature thanks to his environmentalist mother, and for decades has been painting birds in hyperrealistic and surreal styles. His previous works with the Audubon Mural Project include an Ovenbird in Hamilton Heights and a range of woodland species in Forest Park, Queens. Cern’s work has also been featured at the San Diego Museum of Art, Museu Brasileiro De Escultura in Sao Paulo, and Los Angeles MOCA. 

Though Cern is an on-and-off gardener when it comes to real plants, he enjoys creating natural imagery in his murals. “I consider myself an artificial gardener, in a way,” he says. In his design for this mural, he wanted to capture the personalities and energy of these two bird species and play with perspective between the close-up warbler and the more distant junco. He hopes the mural can add color to the garden as the surrounding plants go through their seasonal changes. “I just tried to make something beautiful,” he says.