Town & Country

Birds flock to the city’s walls

IT’S an odd thing, walking around some of the more deprived areas of the nation’s capital and coming face to face with a mural of a bittern—a strange juxtaposition to see some of the country’s rarest and most threatened bird species in urban places that seem so hostile to them. These birds are the work of ATM, an artist who, from London to Bristol and from Poland to Norway, uses his talents to celebrate the beauty of birds and warn us about the threat of extinction.

‘When I was a kid, I was obsessed with painting birds and animals,’ he says. ‘I loved birds and I loved painting them. When I went to art college, pictures of birds weren’t taken that seriously, so I moved away from the subject.’ He came back to them later, he explains, but the opportunity to paint birds on walls was more by