Song of the Huia (the expatriate’s dream) is a painting born from distance — the experience of living far from New Zealand while carrying its landscape, birds, and stories inwardly. The scene unfolds as a dream of return: a clearing beneath a fallen tree where time gathers rather than passes, and where species separated by history or extinction meet again.

The figure in the background is a self-portrait, drawn from an old photograph and rendered as a half-remembered presence. Living in Wiltshire, England, Ray Ching places himself within the work as both participant and observer. Beside him sits a Māori wahine, also living abroad, whose quiet attentiveness anchors the composition and brings a living cultural presence into the dream.

Around them gather many of the birds the artist has painted over a lifetime. They arrive not as specimens but as companions, assembled to hear the Huia — physically absent through extinction, yet present here through memory. Along the lower edge, a kererū and tīeke seem to call the gathering, while a lone gull looks outward toward the sea, evoking migration, separation, and return.

Painted with the close observation that defines Ching’s wildlife art, the work moves beyond natural history into something more reflective. The forest becomes a remembered atmosphere where personal history, ecological loss, and cultural identity intertwine. Song of the Huia (the expatriate’s dream) is ultimately a meditation on belonging, and on a homeland sustained through memory, storytelling, and the enduring presence of its birds.