Can New Zealand’s extinct birds help save the living? Photographer captures species ‘haunting’ a nation’s history

Pardington spat out the coin and looked at the bird, the male with its long, curved beak and pronounced wattle.

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She knew little about the huia; its distinctive song, nor its prized tail feathers.

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But it was hit hard by habitat loss, which accelerated after the arrival of European settlers, until it died out in the 1900s.

Today the artist, who is of Māori and Scottish descent, sees the irony of her first encounter — liberating the bird from a symbol of the culture that caused its demise.

The huia, like some other native bird species, have “haunted our history,” she said.

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At this spring’s Venice Biennale art exhibition, Pardington’s photography will occupy the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion.

“EDITOR’S NOTE: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions”

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Her series “Taharaki Skyside” (“The Multitudes Skyside”) features 17 portraits of birds including extinct species like the huia and whēkau (“laughing owl”), alongside vulnerable and endangered parrot species such as the kākā (forest dwellers) and the kea (the world’s only alpine parrot).

The birds come from museums across New Zealand and Australia.

Some have traveled farther as part of colonial-era collections — as far as the British Museum — and been returned; a story unto itself about the plundering of the natural world in the age of empire, and institutions reckoning with their inheritance.

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