Gallery: Ode to Hawaii’s Imperiled Honeycreepers

From the Winter 2026 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now.

Hawaii-born artist Jon Ching fell in love with painting birds after his partner gave him a book of birds in flight about 10 years ago. “The feathers, the form, the way the light hit,” Ching recalls. “Something clicked in my brain.” 

In 2024 Ching was named an American Bird Conservancy Conservation and Justice Fellow, leading to a series of lightly surrealist paintings depicting the group of imperiled, native birds called the Hawaiian honeycreepers. Some, such as Akekee (above), have fewer than 100 birds left in their wild populations.

“Awareness of the birds in Hawaii is starting to grow, but when I was growing up, I had no idea. I couldn’t name one native, endemic bird,” Ching says. “I try to create an emotional connection. … We’re not gonna save them if we don’t have a relationship with them, or even know that they exist.”