In Search of Hawaii's Vanishing Birdlife

An expedition to record the sights and sounds of this archipelago's rapidly declining native birds

by Miyoko Chu

Seeing Tim Barksdale and Greg Budney board the airplane in Honolulu, you'd never guess that their ordinary suitcases held an unprecedented collection of dazzling bird specimens. Their expedition to Hawaii had yielded the bold red-and-black Iiwi with its curved pinkish bill, the fiery-orange Akepa, the tiny chestnut-colored Elepaio, the rare Akiapolaau with its chisel-and-probe bill, and every other bird species native to the Big Island. Barksdale and Budney were bringing these digital "specimens" to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology—clip after clip of sounds and video images of Hawaii's colorful birds flying, foraging, and singing in their natural habitats. Later, anyone opening the figurative drawer to the Lab's new multimedia museum could encounter an Akepa swooping down from the sky and singing in a display for its mate, or a pair of Iiwi chasing one another from tree to tree. Archived and formatted for the Internet, these dynamic recordings will have tremendous potential for scientific study and for reaching tens of thousands of people around the world with sounds and images of Hawaii's birds.

The expedition to Hawaii was part of an ambitious new initiative at the Lab's Macaulay Library to acquire sound recordings and video footage of every bird species, starting with North America and Hawaii. Long known for its audio recordings of animals—with 160,000 cuts, the largest such collection in the world—the Macaulay Library is undergoing a transformation into a multimedia museum of animal behavior. Sound recordings, photographs, and video footage of birds and other animals will soon be distributed over the Internet for use by scientists, conservationists, educators, and the general public.

Last year, after acquiring two extensive video collections, the Macaulay Library had video footage of all but 120 of the bird species found in North America and Hawaii. Filling in these gaps has been a priority, as has building a more comprehensive collection that will include every subspecies and color morph, and all of their conspicuous behaviors. Hawaiian birds are at the top of the wish list, both because many of the native species have never been filmed before and because so many Hawaiian birds are imperiled. Of 93 native Hawaiian bird species, 17 have gone extinct in the last two centuries and 33 are threatened or endangered. The intelligent Alala, or Hawaiian Crow, was down to just two individuals in the wild when Barksdale and Budney launched their expedition last year.

"I had heard how desperate the situation is for Hawaii's native birds," says Barksdale, a professional videographer and Lab affiliate, "but I don't think I really understood how bad it was until I got there. I saw trees, flowers, and birds everywhere, yet none of them were native species. I searched for three days at the lower elevations without finding a native species. By the fourth day I was thinking, Good heavens, this is a disaster area."

Budney, curator of the Macaulay Library's sound collection, joined Barksdale in Hawaii to capture high-quality audio recordings that the video camera would be unable to pick up. "Just weeks before, I had been in England," Budney says, "and the predominant things I'd seen as I walked along the coastline were gorse and Sky Larks. On our way up the mountain to Hakalau National Forest Wildlife Refuge, what I saw was unbelievable—gorse and Sky Larks. It took me days to get over it. Here I was on a remote Pacific Island, but it was just like what I had seen in southwest England."

***

That's the Hawaii most people know—a bizarre assemblage of plants and animals from various parts of the world. Not a single native bird made it onto Project FeederWatch's "Top 10" list of feeder birds seen most frequently in Hawaii. The list includes the Spotted Dove from Asia, Northern Cardinal from North America, Red-crested Cardinal from South America, and House Sparrow from Europe by way of New Zealand. Most residents of Hawaii never see any of their native birds, which once extended from the Big Island's high elevations all the way down to the sea. Those birds are virtually gone from regions below 4,000 feet now, the consequence of a complex chain of ecological disasters that cascaded down beginning with the arrival of the first humans on the islands around 400–700 A.D.

Before then, the only plants and animals to reach the islands were those that flew or floated across more than 2,000 miles of open ocean. No mammals succeeded except the Hawaiian hoary bat, nor did any amphibians or terrestrial reptiles. A small number of birds from perhaps as few as 20 colonizations became the founders of Hawaii's unique avifauna. These birds exploited the islands' rich flowers, fruits, seeds, and insects. In as little as 3.5 million years, one finchlike ancestor with an evolutionarily labile bill gave rise to a stunning diversity of some 50 kinds of Hawaiian honeycreepers. The 23 extant Hawaiian honeycreepers include the Maui Parrotbill and Akiapolaau, which use their sturdy lower bill and curved upper bill to extract insects from wood; the Iiwi and Kauai Amakihi, which use their long curved bills to probe deep into the corollas of flowers; other nectar-sippers, such as the Apapane and Akohekohe, which use their more modest bills to drink from shallower flowers; and the warblerlike Maui Alauahio that gleans insects from leaves and bark with its small, simple bill.

Hunting and clearing land for agriculture and other uses took a massive toll on Hawaiian birds over the centuries, but the menagerie of exotic wildlife that humans brought from other parts of the world was even more devastating. Because Hawaii's plants evolved in a benign land free of grazing and browsing mammals, they lost their defenses against these herbivores. "We have nettleless nettles, mintless mints, spineless raspberries, and briarless greenbriars," says Jack Jeffrey, wildlife biologist at the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge. These were easy pickings for the pigs, cattle, sheep, deer, goats, and rabbits that accompanied people to the islands. "It was a giant salad bar," Jeffrey says. "We lost the understory plants and, in some instances, the whole forest." After the cattle and pigs trampled and devoured the native vegetation, ranchers introduced grasses that were adapted to grazing, such as kikuyu grass from Africa. For Hawaii's birds, the sudden appearance of pasture created an unrecognizable landscape with none of the food sources needed by the wood-borers, the nectar-sippers, and the leaf-gleaners.

In the forest that did remain, the native birds encountered new predators: rats, mongooses, dogs, and cats. For millennia, the only predators had been other birds, such as the Io, or Hawaiian Hawk. To evade these predators, a young bird could drop to the ground and hide in the understory, an ineffective strategy against mammals. Even the birds' body odor, which never mattered before, became a liability. Hawaiian honeycreepers have a musty smell that rats, cats, and mongooses can follow to find roosting birds or their nests. Hawaiian birds are poorly adapted to furry creatures that crawl up to them at night; one scientist documented how 20 rats fed on a Laysan Albatross as it incubated its eggs, killing it by morning.

Populations of birds already devastated by habitat destruction and predation have been further reduced by disease. The winged creatures that humans brought to the islands—nonnative birds and mosquitoes—carried avian pox and avian malaria. With untested immune systems, native birds have perished below the "line of death," approximately 4,500 feet—altitudes where mosquitoes spread malaria most effectively. Under normal circumstances, Hawaii 's higher elevations would be inhospitable to mosquitoes. Even though some of these areas receive 200 to 300 inches of rain per year, the porous soil and streams carry it away so rapidly that virtually none of it is left as standing water. But pigs have created spawning grounds for mosquitoes by chewing on tree ferns and eating the starchy core, leaving a small trough that collects enough rainwater to breed thousands of larvae. Mosquitoes now inhabit regions as high as 6,000 feet. Fortunately, the parasite that causes malaria apparently can't complete its life cycle within the mosquito at the highest elevations.

It wasn't until Barksdale and Budney reached the fence marking the beginning of the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge at 6,500 feet that they suddenly found Hawaii's birds. "It's like night and day on either side of the fence," says Budney. The area outside the fence is treeless and choked with gorse—remnants of an old cattle ranch. Inside the fence, feral cows and pigs have been removed, gorse and other weeds controlled, and native trees replanted. "It was absolutely vibrant," says Budney. "We saw the Iiwi moving around from tree to tree, displacing one another. We watched as the Akepa did their flight songs, flying from the tree, sweeping down, and singing. Almost all of the native birds that should have been there were there, including four endangered species."

In the refuge Barksdale and Budney found more birds than they could possibly record at once. "Iiwi were calling everywhere and there were incredible densities of Akepa moving like red rockets from tree to tree," Barksdale says. As Barksdale filmed, Budney worked in the same area to record the birds' sounds, staying far enough away to keep his sensitive equipment from recording the mechanical whir of Barksdale's camera.

Standing near a grove of koa trees, Budney captured one of the most challenging vocalizations to record: the song of a male Akepa. Because several males tend to sing at once, recording a clean song is a feat of luck and timing. "I saw a male Akepa copulate with a female in the crown of a tree," Budney says. "A fraction of a second later he leaped off the perch. I instinctively aimed the microphone and tracked him as he was coming down, and he started singing." As the male swooped downward in a slow, graceful arc, Budney recorded the teedle leedle leedle leedle of the male's lilting voice.

For Barksdale, the highlight was recording the endangered Akiapolaau, a greenish yellow Hawaiian honeycreeper that hitches along trees, pounding the bark with its short awl-like lower bill and using its long upper bill to probe for and hook insects. "I had perfect focus, and I could see the aki through the viewfinder hammering, hammering, hammering, pulling the little larva out of the wood, and wiping its bill," Barksdale says. "Even though its upper mandible is so much longer than the lower one, it maneuvered them so they touched at the tips and the bird could grasp its prey. That bird was so incredible, so specialized and unique," says Barksdale, "I get emotional just thinking about it."

As a result of habitat restoration efforts at the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, the Akiapolaau and other native birds are beginning to claim back forests that were destroyed or damaged during cattle ranching decades ago. When the refuge was established, more than a quarter of its 16,000 acres were open pasture. Since then, the refuge has expanded to 33,000 acres, and cattle and pigs have been removed from two-fifths of that area. To restore the habitat, refuge staff and volunteers have removed gorse from all but 20 acres and are controlling nonnative blackberry, holly, and grasses. They have introduced a fungus to kill banana poka, a vine that can climb native trees, shade out understory plants, and cause the canopy to collapse. Since 1989, volunteers have planted 250,000 trees, mainly koa, known as the mother of the forest because it can colonize open sunny areas, later providing shade and nutrients that other native plants need. Some of the koa trees are now 20 to 30 feet tall in areas where only 20 years ago there had been nothing but grass.

The Amakihi, Elepaio, Apapane, and Iiwi are seen regularly in these planted woodlands now, and the Akiapolaau is moving in to tap the bark of the new koa trees in search of insects. "These birds wouldn't be there if it was just open pasture," Jeffrey says. "We've created habitat for them—something that I didn't think would ever happen in my lifetime. I figured it was going to take 100 years before the Akiapolaau moved back in there. And son-of-a-gun, in 10 years they're utilizing that habitat."

Although Hakalau is a heartening example of how conservation efforts can reverse habitat degradation caused by invasive species, Jeffrey is quick to point out the potential for much more to be done. "Give us a few million dollars," he says. "Many people don't realize the importance of national wildlife refuges in protecting native and endangered species throughout the United States, and neither does Congress, otherwise funding for refuges would be much, much higher." In the uphill battle for funding, the advocates of Hawaii's native wildlife know that the prospects are dim unless more people begin to care about these unique species, and that people generally don't care about what they don't know.

"The big problem with Hawaii's appreciation and protection of native birds is that very few people ever see them," says Jeff Burgett, a biologist at the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge. Additionally, the native avifauna had never been filmed or videotaped extensively before the Macaulay Library's expedition. As a result, Burgett says, "People here know more about bowerbirds and boobies than they do about Hawaii's forest birds." If these birds can make their way into people's consciousness—whether through video footage in the classroom, over the Internet, on television, or in a session in Congress—it will be an important step toward increasing the kind of appreciation needed to make a bigger
difference.

***

By the time Barksdale and Budney wrapped up their work at Hakalau and the other locations, they had recorded all of the Big Island's native species except one: the Alala. Biologists considered this species to be "functionally extinct" in the wild because, despite annual nesting activity, the last wild pair had failed to produce any eggs for several years. Filming these wild birds could have two important consequences: it could help reveal natural behaviors that biologists might use to inform reintroduction efforts of captive-bred birds, and it could preserve, for future generations, an important part of Hawaii's biological and cultural heritage. "Hawaii needs a symbol that will grab people and make them care and engage again with the native habitats," says Burgett. "A lot of people feel that the Alala is a prime example because it's intelligent and stately. It's a bird that people have tended to ascribe spiritual power to, just as some Native American cultures did with the raven. But it's one that the last generation has grown up never knowing."

The territory of the Alala pair was on a private cattle ranch, and Budney and Barksdale were only granted access on the last day of their expedition, on the condition that they would stay only 24 hours and that Burgett would accompany them. They hauled more than 200 pounds of recording equipment, cumbersome blinds, and other gear up the rugged hillsides to 7,500 feet. Arriving around 3:00 A.M., they debated where to set up the blinds. Their decisions would be crucial; to minimize disruption, they had to agree to stay within the blinds the entire time. If they placed them in the wrong spot, they might miss the Alala altogether.

They decided that Barksdale would shoot video footage near the nest, where Burgett had monitored the pair from a blind nearby. Budney would record vocalizations near a koa tree where the birds might come to forage. Setting up their equipment in darkness, they had no way of knowing how the birds would use the surrounding area. "We didn't really get much sleep that night," Barksdale says. The first light of morning revealed both birds sitting in the nest—but a large branch obscured part of Barksdale's view. "Finally the male came out of the nest, hit the branch at the top, and paused and picked a couple of berries before he jumped down," Barksdale says. "I was able to record him when he did that three or four times throughout the day."

The real drama, though, happened at the koa tree near Budney's blind, where the microphone lay hidden beneath a camouflage cloth. "About half an hour after dawn, I heard the bird's footsteps on the mike, and the next thing I knew, he was whaling away on the microphone," Budney says. "Later, at 4:00 P.M., the male flew in and I heard him land right above my blind. I looked out the window, a small slit, and saw him directly above me, seemingly looking down at me. Then he began foraging on a large root of a koa tree, hammering away at it like a woodpecker. He followed that root, which cradled the blind, until he came to the end of the root and saw an ohia tree with large vertical flaps of bark. He probed the bark for three or four minutes, sticking his entire head inside the flaps, then took off and disappeared from sight." Later, the male returned with his mate and, in Budney's clear view, presented the female with a berry. He raised and flattened his head feathers as he interacted with her, trying to persuade her to accept the gift. "He kept trying to feed her this berry, rolling it back and forth in his beak, but she would have none of it," Budney says. "She plucked her own berry."

"It was 10:30 at night when we finished," Barksdale says. "We had been in the field for 22 hours that day. We were exhausted but elated." Although Budney had only heard and recorded a portion of the birds' range of vocalizations and Barksdale had been limited to the obstructed view of the nest, they hoped to return someday to document more of this remarkable pair's interactions. Unfortunately, just two months after they captured the sounds and images of these bold and memorable creatures, the Alala disappeared. The pair hasn't been seen since June 14, 2002. In the face of this tragic loss, researchers involved in the Alala recovery are now focusing their efforts on the 37 captive Alala. Many of these birds and their offspring may eventually be reintroduced to the wild.

Meanwhile, the Macaulay Library's quest goes on to document the world's birds and to share these sounds and images with the public. Already a program featuring the birds that Barksdale and Budney recorded in Hakalau's forests has aired on a public access channel in Hawaii. In Ithaca, New York, visitors to the Lab of Ornithology who step into its new multimedia surround-sound theater are transported to Hawaii, where they watch the birds that Barksdale and Budney encountered and learn about Hawaii's natural history. When the collections go online later this year, researchers and conservationists from around the world will be able to use the footage to study how birds interact with one another and cope with the challenges in their habitats. Educators can select sound and video clips of birds and their captivating behaviors to bring into lecture halls and classrooms. By sowing these seeds of knowledge and appreciation, the birds that Budney and Barksdale recorded may speak to the next generation of citizens and conservationists who can be advocates for wildlife not just in Hawaii, but everywhere. "When I was a kid, a single computer could fill up an entire building," Barksdale says. "Now computers live on little kids' laps. It's such a profound change that we'll get to share this video footage with people around the world, instantly. Who knows what that will do? Who knows what person that will touch?"

Help fund an expedition! Learn more about the Macaulay Library Sights and Sounds Initiative.

Watch video footage and listen to sounds of wildlife. Visit the Macaulay Library Animal Behavior Archive.

 

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Tim Gallagher, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-2443. email: twg3@cornell.edu