Hawaiian Honeycreepers

A long, long time ago, a number of finches found their way to several remote, bird-less and unpopulated islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The archipelago's volcanic mountains contained tropical jungles with cascading waterfalls along with dry forests sloping to the coasts and beaches. These stranded birds found plenty of nectar or seeds to sustain them and over millennia multiple new species of birds evolved from their descendants by adapting to the specific diets and habitats available on the different islands. Later generations of the original finches became the large and diverse family of Hawaiian honeycreepers.

With widely varying colors, bill shapes and sizes, the honeycreepers were especially prized by the first human settlers, the Polynesians, who landed on the islands almost a thousand years ago. The rich reds, bright yellows and stark blacks of the birds' feathers were used to decorate the cloaks and adornments of the most important tribal leaders. But it seems like most of the honeycreepers survived this first wave of human encroachment, even though the new Hawaiians at least partially deforested and degraded the landscape.

But the next wave of human contact wouldn't be as kind to these unique Hawaiian birds. By the early nineteenth century, European and American traders, whalers and settlers were placing their own indelible footprint on Hawaii. Along with the barrels of lamp oil and crates of bibles, mosquitoes arrived on the isolated islands almost simultaneously.

Honeycreepers had no immunity to a host of avian diseases that were easily transmitted by the pesky insects. Meanwhile the birds' traditional habitats were dramatically transformed if not destroyed by large-scale commercial agricultural development. As a result, the only colonies of birds that could survive were the ones that lived at higher and cooler elevations in the island's interiors where mosquitoes couldn't reach and native forests remained intact.

Additional stresses like invasive plant species and introduced feral mammals - especially pigs - continued to degrade even more of the honeycreepers' natural habitat throughout the twentieth century. Most of the more than fifty species became extinct. But the next wave of human contact in a different form is pushing the remaining few species' survival to the tipping point; it's the dramatic climate change that's resulting from mankind's dedication to a carbon-burning economy.

As global temperatures increase, mosquitoes live at higher and higher elevations. Already the i'iwi population is plummeting on Kauai where the highest peak on the island barely reaches a mile. It's a shameful irony that the plane I flew there and the car I rented to witness the beauty of this scarlet, sickle-billed honeycreeper are sealing its fate. So I wasn't surprised when I didn't see one.