March 23, 2026
From the Spring 2026 concern of Residing Chicken journal. Subscribe now.
When illustrator C.F. Payne appears on the California Gull that he painted within the form of Utah, he says that he has a very good chuckle: “It jogs my memory of the outdated Tom and Jerry cartoons, like when Tom will get his head slammed in a mailbox.” That sense of caprice reveals up all through a current venture Payne undertook to color all 50 state birds of the united statesA., with every fowl portrayed within the form of the state they symbolize.
The primary state fowl he painted, a Northern Cardinal from his dwelling state of Ohio, offered simply hours after he posted it on his Instagram feed, as did a second one of many similar topic. “Then somebody requested if I may do Illinois,” he says. “I began pondering, ‘What if I may do all 50 states?’ and that’s the way it began.”
