Hawaii Picspam! Part three: Urban Birds

[urbpan]

Of the dozen or so urban birds I've encountered in Honolulu, I'm most taken with this one, the zebra dove Geopelia striata. It's as tame as a rock pigeon, but smaller than a robin. They are very attractive, and show a lot of interesting social behavior. They were introduced to Hawaii from Asia in 1922, and are now common throughout the islands.


In case you'd rather see one on grass.


This is the red-crested cardinal Paroaria coronata, which I prefer to call the Brazilian cardinal, because, duh! all cardinals have red crests! Well, no, they don't, but the ones I've seen do. We also saw a northern cardinal, but I didn't get a picture of it. We saw many more Brazilian cardinals, which were introduced from South America in the 1930's. They have spread from Oahu to three other islands.




Take my word for it, this is the underside of a Java finch Padda oryzivora, an attractive little bird often seen in pet stores. Native to Indonesia, this bird was introduced in 1867 and again in the 1960's. I don't know why it was introduced twice--this is the danger of working from one source book. (Hawaii's Birds Hawaii Audubon Society 2005.)


Looking up here at the nominative field marking of the red-vented bulbul Pycnonotus cafer. Native to South Asia, it was releases of caged birds in the 1950's that established it as an urban bird in Honolulu.


This is another view of the same bird. It's an interesting little guy, all dark with a ragged crest (which is hard to see when you are looking up at its vent).


This is probably a mallard Anas platyrhynchos. There's a distant chance that it's a Hawaiian duck, or Koloa A. wyvilliana, but those are uncommon in Oahu. These native ducks were nearly driven extinct, but were bred in captivity and released. However, mallards (which in Hawaii are mostly the descendants of captive animals) readily hybridize with Koloas. Some authorities think that all the Koloas in Hawaii are actually Koloa/mallard hybrids, while others consider the Koloa to be a subspecies of mallard.


This one took a while to identify, since it wasn't in the "urban birds" section of my guide. That's because the white-rumped shama Copsychus malabaricus, a thrush-like songbird from introduced from Malaysia, has penetrated the native forests, and is only sometimes found in brushy urban habitats.


And here's a flock of greater flamingos Phoenicopterus ruber in the background, a black-crowned night-heron in the middle ground, a cattle egret way in the back on the fence, and up front a Nene, Hawaii's state bird and one of the most endangered goose species in the world. I guess this would be a good time to introduce the pictures I took at the Honolulu zoo. The flamingos and the Nene are collection animals, but the herons are freeloaders snacking on little fish in the zoo ponds. More zoo pictures to come!

Comments

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

awww, i like the cardinal!

[bellelvsbeast.livejournal.com]

Wow the cardinal is gorgeous! :)

[aemiis-zoo.livejournal.com]

They have Nene geese at Wildlife Safari (not that I actually recommend going there...).