Big Year Birding in Hawaii - Part 4.

Kauai is the oldest of the seven volcanic Hawaiian islands. The islands were formed from an underwater volcano that erupted seven times. Shifting continental plates pushed the nascent islands away from the underwater volcano over time. Each eruption formed a new island in the archipelago. Because each island is of a different age, it’s geography is quite distinct from the others. Kauai has jagged mountains that are too steep to support agriculture or human settlement and although they suffer from erosion, these remote ecosystems serve as a refuge for the sensitive endemic species of flora and fauna. Unfortunately conservation biologists have not found sustainable ways to prevent the proliferation of avian malaria and other bird-threatening plagues such as predation from introduced rats and mongoose. The numbers of most endemic species of birds on Kauai continue to diminish. Breeding seabirds which use burrows on mountainsides for raising their young are also threatened by the introduced predators. Still, after the island of Hawaii, Kauai offers the most species of the Hawaiian Islands for the Big Year birder. 

John’s wife Linda found a lovely lodging for us at the Fern Grotto Inn just outside of Lihue on an old plantation property. We arranged with Adrian Burke for him to help us track down three of the six species of endemic passerines still surviving on Kauai. The other three are found in deep swamps or mountaintops too dangerous to access. Unfortunately, Adrian woke up Wednesday morning, October 18, 2023, with a bad case of food poisoning and couldn’t help us after all. So we headed to KoKe’e State Park unassisted. We left a few hours  later with having identified just one of the three endemic targets, the Kauai Elepaio (803). 


After lunch, we added Chestnut Munia (804) and Red Avadavat (805) to our list. These are exotic estrildid finches that are fairly common in Kauai. Nevertheless, we had to work pretty hard for identifiable photos of these tiny finches. 


On Thursday, October 19, 2023, we headed to Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge where we found plenty of Hawaiian Duck (806). Then we visited Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge. This was a fabulous place with great views of a variety of nesting seabirds. We saw hundreds of Red-footed Booby and good numbers of Brown Booby, Wedge-tailed Shearwater (including nestlings at our feet), Great Frigatebird and White-tailed Tropicbird. We returned here Friday morning in search of a staked out Red-tailed Tropicbird but had no luck. In the afternoon, Bill and I searched for a staked out Great Necklaced Laughing Thrush, a rare exotic species that is nomadic, so it was no great surprise that we missed that as well. At the end of the day, Bill dropped me at the airport. A couple hours later I was back in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii, excited to take Lance Tanino’s pelagic trip in the morning. 



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