Christmas Bird Count

This year for winter break I was lucky enough to visit the Big Island of Hawaii and explore their Volcanoes National Park which was brimming with amazing wildlife a lot of which was completely new to me. Furthermore, I got to opportunity to meet a local wildlife biologist and participate in Audobon’s Christmas Bird Count (CBC).

Firstly though what even is a CBC, well in 1900 a group of conservationists decided that instead of hunting birds on Christmas day they would organize a count for them instead to observe the different species and keep track of the numbers they saw, and the tradition has continued since then. Right now it’s primarily organized by Audubon where groups can register to participate in the count and then submit their collected data for an effort in citizen science and to help professionals studying birds have a more extensive library of data to conduct research.

With that history in mind, I’m going to dive into my experience on my first ever CBC. Our count happened on the 19th at the Volcanoes National Park where we met with the local wildlife biologist Michelle Reynolds, the leader for our count. The first thing that needed to be decided was who was going to keep the tally, which I volunteered to do, essentially you have to write the species and then tally for each one you see so it can be entered as data later on. Henry also kept an eBird checklist so we had two ways to keep track of the species and the numbers. After this we were ready to head off and already there was one species that was prominent and would be for the entire walk, the Apapane. A honeycreeper native to Hawaii, Michelle told us the easiest way to identify them by sight was to look for the white underwear! Overall we counted around 130 of them and also learned about there huge variety of calls making them more difficult to identify by sound sometimes.

As we continued on our walk one of the first species we saw were the Hawaii Amakihi, small greenish yellow birds which we saw in a pair dancing around the base of a tree, the previous day we had observed one too but it was cool to see them up close. They were incredibly fast and they hopped through the trees and low brush following each other. But just as we saw these more calls surrounded us the Apapane, of course, but also the Warbling White Eyes the first of many as we counted almost 60 in total on our walk.

Now, what was interesting about this species is that it is actually from different parts of eastern Asia from the Philippines to Japan and was introduced to Hawaii in 1927 from Japan. This is actually something incredibly common to Hawaii more than that it’s a huge problem as species which are not native but rather invasive are destroying the equilibrium of the ecosystem and in many cases causing a complete wipeout of the native species.

An example Michelle gave us is the Apapane and other honeycreepers, mosquitoes are not native to Hawaii but were accidentally introduced and became invasive this isn’t an issue for any of the other introduced birds as they are used to mosquitoes since they are present in other parts of the world. However, for the honeycreepers the mosquitoes are deadly as they are highly susceptible to avian malaria carried by the mosquitoes. Due to this, there are no longer honeycreepers at the lower warmer elevations where mosquitoes thrive and big chunks of the populations have been wiped out. But, Michelle also mentioned that it seems the Apapane are starting to develop some immune resistance which will hopefully develop enough to save the species.

This really sets the scene for the birding in Hawaii and it is truly a fascinating place as while on one hand you have the native and endemic birds and on the other are birds from completely different parts of the world and even some that I was familiar with since they live in Sri Lanka. Common Mynas, for one, are thriving in Hawaii and they were one of the first species I saw when I got off the plane at the airport, Spotted Doves are also common and we saw and heard them throughout our stay.

Of course, that being said it really does feel special when you get to see one of the local Hawaiian birds that aren’t present anywhere else and a main one we were really hoping for was the Nene or the Hawaiian Goose. Granted, we were hiking through pretty dense forested area, not really habitat for the Nene but we got pretty lucky as we were standing at a lookout point we heard a rather bizarre call for a forest bird, we looked up and lo and behold a single Nene flying right over which was super exciting and a lifer* for all of us.

*In birding a lifer is a bird you’ve just see for the first time in your life

As we continued through the forest another bird’s calls started to become increasingly common, the Omao. Endemic to Hawaii and the Big Island specifically the Omao became a lifer once we heard it as that is all that is required for a bird observation. However, we were keen to see one and Michelle wanted to show us one which took us through a really cool section of the jungle and we could hear the Omao super close by in the brush and trees

We tried to follow it down the path and spot it but we were unsuccessful, and the path quickly brought us back to our start at the visitor center. Even without the Omao sighting the CBC was really a special experience thanks to our guide Michelle who really taught us a lot about the local flora and fauna. It was such a lucky and unique experience to be able to observe the native birds of Hawaii and I hope that conservation efforts are successful in protecting them but it is certainly a fragile and complicated situation.

 

 

Here was our checklist for the walk which we logged using eBird. https://ebird.org/checklist/S99133660