Helmeted Honeyeater

This is a piece I did for Losing Altitude -  a collab aimed at raising awareness for the plight of endangered birds. It's a mix of paper cutting and quilling. All the feathers were hand cut. You won't see it here but each feather was then embossed using a scribe to give a typical feather pattern.

The Helmeted Honeyeater (Lichenostomus melanops cassidix) is a critically endangered species endemic to Victoria, our only endemic bird. It's a subspecies of yellow-tufted honey eater. The helmeted honey eater gets its name from the helmet-like tuft of yellow feathers on it's crown, a distinguishing feature of the species. Much of the urgency around its conservation surrounds the fact that it's Victoria's bird emblem, and letting an emblematic species go extinct doesn't bode well.

It's threatened by all the usual suspects: loss of habitat, habitat degradation, introduced species and anthropogenic climate change.