One difference between WC and Dermot Cole is that Dermot is a journalist and WC is just another irresponsible blogger.1 As this blog post will show. Dermot Cole ran a fine essay recently, showing just how hypocritical and dishonest Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy is when it comes to Alaska’s state budget. Dermot effectively demonstrated by…
A final Hawai’i bird post, focusing on migrant birds that fly to Hawai’i for the winter and then back to their breeding grounds for the summer and a few native birds that hang around year-round. Several species of shorebird make that trek across the North Pacific. The first is the Pacific Golden Plover. This species…
As a penultimate birding post from the Hawai’ian Islands, WC offers some photos of some native bird species. WC has already reported on the native passerine – songbirds – still hanging on at the highest elevations on Kauai. The remaining birds are migrants, seabirds and shorebirds, who long ago decided Kauai was a good place…
WC described some of the introduced songbirds that are found on O’ahu. Most of those species are found on Kauai now as well. But WC found a few additional species, some of them unique to Kauai and some that WC just missed on O’ahu. And where WC got better photos of an introduced species on…
If the Great Black Hawk has a lame name, the Laughing Falcon’s is dead on. The call sounds a lot like demented laughter, and is a signature sound of the Neotropics. When a male and a female get to dueting it will sometimes make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Only…
It’s pronounced “ko-kay-ay.” It’s a state park at the headwaters of the Waimea River on Kauai Island, 4,000 feet above sea level on the upper slopes of the heavily eroded remnants of the central Kauai volcano. It holds the largest part of the remaining native forest that formerly covered most of the island. That forest…
In WC’s Geomorphology class, on the first day, the professor (whose name WC has forgotten) told us, “If you only take one thing away for this course, it should be this: Erosion always wins.” If you need proof of that claim, you should visit Kauai, the oldest of the principle islands of the Hawai’ian Islands.…
O’ahu Island and Waikiki Beach in particular are not WC’s and Mrs. WC’s favorite places in the Hawai’ian Islands. Maybe even least favorite. If you want a big city in the tropics there are lots of birdier places. But O’ahu is the only birder-accessible place on the planet to see Fairy Terns, a/k/a White Terns.…
As WC described yesterday, many of the endemic birds are gone. Marine birds have fared a little better, especially where the State of Hawai’i or the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service have worked to fence out the human-introduced rats, feral cats and mongoose that eat bird eggs and hatchlings. He’s a selection of native birds,…
Many of O’ahu’s native bird species are gone. The Polynesians and westerners brought in too many invaders: pigs, rats, mongoose, cattle, goats, chicken and, worst of all, avian malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. Island ecologies are notoriously fragile. and the Hawai’ian Islands proved to be no different. Today, native bird species, especially O’ahu’s amazing songbirds, are mostly gone.…
WC is going to be off chasing birds for a while. Blog posts will be spotty, because WC’s access to the intertubes will be spotty. Regular blog posts will resume when WC gets back from birding.
It’s black. It’s big. It’s a hawk. Therefore, it’s a Great Black Hawk. Another complete failure of imagination by the folks who name birds. With a wing span of well over a 3.5 feet and a body length of more than two feet, this is a large raptor. The long, bright yellow legs, white tail…
