Hattiesburg’s wildlife mural
Muralist Gavin Bird, 29, just finished a nocturnal‑wildlife mural in Hattiesburg that marks the city’s 69th mural in an ongoing campaign aiming for 100 — a fast municipal street‑art strategy that’s reshaping local identity. Small programs like this add visual wayfinding and tourist interest while creating an intentional public‑art trail for residents and visitors. If you track street‑art campaigns, this is a tidy example of incremental placemaking through murals. (nationaltoday.com)
Hattiesburg just unveiled its 69th large-scale mural, and the new wall is not downtown at all. It sits off the Longleaf Trace between 4th Street and the University of Southern Mississippi track and field complex, turning a trail-side stretch into a destination of its own. (hburgart.com) The mural is called “We Only Come Out at Night,” and Mississippi artist Gavin Bird painted it at 99 feet long. Hattiesburg Alliance for Public Art unveiled it on January 28, 2026, as the city’s first mural of the year. (hburgart.com) Bird is 29, and his wall is packed with native nocturnal animals instead of a city slogan or a celebrity portrait. The piece includes a great horned owl, a barn owl, a red fox, a nighthawk, a raccoon, and an opossum drawn from Mississippi wildlife. (nationaltoday.com) (wxxv25.com) That animal list fits the location. The wall is next to the Longleaf Trace, a 44-mile rail-trail in south Mississippi, so the mural works like a visual field guide for people already biking or walking through a green corridor. (hburgart.com) (visithburg.org) This is not Bird’s first mark on the city. Hattiesburg Alliance for Public Art says he had already contributed two murals in Hattiesburg before this one, while building out dozens more across Mississippi. (hburgart.com) The city has been doing this one wall at a time under a very literal banner: “The City of 100 Murals.” Mississippi State University Extension said Hattiesburg had 52 murals as of fall 2024, which helps show how quickly the count moved from 52 to 69 in roughly a year and a half. (extension.msstate.edu) (hburgart.com) Hattiesburg’s mural push is also tied to tourism, not just decoration. Visit Hattiesburg says the city has marketed its walls as a public-art trail, and Travel + Leisure previously named Hattiesburg one of its top 11 art destinations in the world. (visithburg.org) That trail logic explains why a 99-foot wildlife mural beside a bike path matters more than a single pretty wall usually would. It gives runners, cyclists, students, and visitors one more stop on a route the city is deliberately stitching together, with 31 murals left before it hits 100. (hburgart.com)
