Gray Catbird by Pelumi Adegawa

Listen to the bird in this mural!

Painted: 5/7/2025

About the Mural: In this mural painted by Pelumi Adegawa, a Gray Catbird peeks out from a garden shed, surrounded by a colorful display of native plants: sunflower, milkweed, lobelia, and wild strawberry. 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. 

This mural was created with Dias y Flores Community Garden in Manhattan’s East Village. The community and GreenThumb revitalized the site, which was formerly a rubble-strewn lot, and reopened it as a community space in 1981. Today, the mural sits at the back of the garden, “appearing as a jewel at the end of the walkway of native flowers, climbing roses, and vegetables grown high,” garden member Lisa Miller shared on behalf of the group. She says Dias y Flores members hope the work will inspire visitors to care for the nature around them: “The journey to cherishing, supporting, and preserving our wildlife begins with noticing.”

About the Bird: The Gray Catbird is a spunky songbird species, often found flitting around leafy thickets and shrubby swamps. Though its coloring is understated—mostly gray with a black cap and chestnut patch under its tail—the catbird has a flashy personality. Along with its signature feline-like mew, the catbird is a skilled mimic, picking up on other species’ vocalizations and mixing them into its own songs. “That really resonated with me as an artist,” says Adegawa, who painted the mural. “I often mimic what I see and reinterpret it in my own way to tell a larger story.”

Though the Gray Catbird has been faring well in recent decades, and seems to be increasing in the east, it still faces threats from a changing climate: If warming continues at its current pace, the species could lose 35 percent of its winter range, according to Audubon’s Survival by Degrees report. Limiting climate change can help the species survive across a wider spread of habitats. Meanwhile, maintaining pockets of green space like community gardens—and offering them tasty native plant snacks like the wild strawberries growing at Dias y Flores—remains crucial for supporting catbirds across their range.

About the Artist: Pelumi Adegawa is a Nigerian-born artist, muralist, and instructor based in the New York and New Jersey area. She holds a BFA from Roger Williams University and currently serves as Murals Program Director at Thrive Collective, an arts and mentoring program for public schools. Her work explores African history and culture through a Nigerian-American lens. This is her second project with Audubon; she previously worked on a mural of a Glossy Ibis and Lewis’s Woodpecker on a storefront grate in Harlem.

For Adegawa, painting this mural amid the garden’s natural setting was a meditative experience. “I found myself making friends with the local bees and birds,” she says. “They were so curious, always buzzing or perching nearby as if checking on the progress.” Now that the work is finished, she’s hopeful that it will inspire visitors to slow down, too. “Especially in a busy city like New York, we all deserve a moment to breathe and take in the beauty around us,” the artist says.