Bird loving industrial designer Phil Walters has come up with a creative way to “add beauty to an otherwise largely indifferent world”. It’s become Metalbird, live sized hammer in metal silhouettes of the Tui, Piwakawaka, Huia and Kereru.

The project started off as public art.

“From the get-go I’ve been a fan of the stencil graffiti artist Banksy,” says Walters on his www.metalbird.co.nz website.

“Frankly, I loved the guy’s swagger, intelligence and most of all his humour. I was in Bristol, Banksy’s home in 2009 looking at a Banksy exhibition and was pretty impressed with his cunning.

I sat on the plane on the 28 hrs back home to Auckland wondering what my version of ‘Banksy’ could be and decided that I’d do something sculptural & in 3 dimensions.”

Walters says the idea of metal birds came from wanting to do something he could covertly hammer into lamp posts, trees and buildings in public spaces that would somehow beautify and add value, or at least not offend.”

He’s since “placed” abound 140 birds in the field around the North & South Islands.

The response has been overwhelming. “It turns out that not only did they not offend, actually people wanted them both for their gardens and houses and their own public installations….and as a bonus they attract birds”

We sold them virally for about a year then online for two and is taking orders from around with world with native birds of other countries.

“we’re always keen to promote NZ’s wonderful birdlife and are delighted to have been contacted by Halo. We want to offer a 20% discount to Halo households under the code HALOMB20 via our website www.metalbird.co.nz“