After spending two days on Oahu and two days on Kauai, we flew to The Big Island for the final four days of our trip. The trip exceeded my high expectations. Philip Chaon, our guide form Tropical Birding, is an expert birder and good company. We had a small group with my new friends Neal and Keelin Miller being the only other participants. This gave us all plenty of opportunities to see all the birds.
We saw 90 different species of birds, 56 of which were new for my big year list. With 328 species I moved into the top 20 for the year. I'm on track to hit my goal of 700 species by December 31.
We were not able to get pictures of all the birds we saw. Some of the better finds for the trip that are not illustrated below include: Akeke'e, Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse, Christmas Shearwater, Great Frigatebird, Hawaii Creeper, and Masked Booby.
My favorite bird of the trip is the Akiapola'au. this beautiful little yellow bird has a very odd looking bill. The upper mandible is long and curves downward. The lower mandible is short and straight giving the bird a severe overbite. After wondering aloud how it could manage to eat, I learned that the bird first opens its mouth very wide to get the upper mandible out of the way. Then it uses the lower mandible in woodpecker fashion to excavate a small hole in a branch. It then uses the longer upper mandible to fish out any goodies. this was the last new bird we saw on our trip. We couldn't believe our luck when we had a clear view of it demonstrating its feeding behaviour. Many thanks to phil Chaon for sharing this photo.
Akiapola'au Photo by Phil Chaon
Another highlight of our trip as our pelagic outing. Pelagic trips are needed to see birds that are rarely visible from land. We saw three species of boobies including this brown booby.
We also saw many wedge-tailed shearwaters.
But the highlight of the trip was the humpback whale that breached three times. They can reach 60 feet in length and weigh up to 60 tons. The one we saw was definitely one of the one of the bigger specimens. It rose straight out of the water with its nose about 40 feet in the air. then it fell forward with an explosive crash that we all could feel from several hundred yards distance.
I was surprised to see how small our boat was. I honestly thought it was the boat that would take us from shore to the boat we would be traveling in.
First mate DeVontae in our hurricane boat
We sat on the sides holding a rope with our outside hand and keeping a foot anchored under another rope on the deck. the boat had two 150 horsepower engines and could reach a top speed of 45 MPH. The ocean was fairly calm and we had a great ride.
When off duty DeVontae likes to go spearfishing. He swims two miles out into the ocean and dives up to 80 feet deep holding his breath for four minutes. After spearing a fish, he swims to the surface and fights the fish for up to an hour and a half. His biggest catches run upwards of 60 pounds.
I have seen many beautiful birds during my time in Hawaii. Here is a small sample.
Kalij Pheasant
Akepa
Erchol's Francolin. Note the long leg spurs! Our guide told us that the Erchol's Francolin and the Gray Francolin are known for their raucous call. He added that the only francolin with a musical call is the Aretha Francolin. My kind if guy!