Mike in the Wild

Many seabirds spend long weeks or months at sea, feeding on fish and other marine animals that swim close to the water's surface.  But nesting and raising young require the relative safety of dry land.  Fortunately for a number of birds plying the vast Pacific Ocean for food, the Hawaiian Islands offer islets and cliffs that fit the bill for a safe nursery. At least three decades ago, conservationists and the United States government recognized the indispensable value of Kauai's coastal habitat for a large number of sea-going birds' during breeding season.  And specifically at Kilauea Point on the island's north shore, at the sight of a disused but maintained Coast Guard lighthouse, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now protects a National Wildlife Refuge.   The preserve is home to at least nine native species of birds , most of them seasonally-visiting seabirds.  But one special full-time resident, the nene or Hawaiian goose, lives there too. ...

What strikes you most about the birds you initially see in Kauai and the other Hawaiian Islands is that there are so few native species.  At the airport, along the coastal roads, and throughout your hotel's manicured landscape, you're going to immediately see myna birds, a type of starling from India that's filled some of the void left when many native birds died off from the mosquito-born diseases that reached the island with western visitors in the nineteenth century.  And unique on the Garden Island, as Kauai is nicknamed, are the countless feral chickens noisily and aggressively begging for food.  Of course the equally numerous cats make you wonder why it's not referred to as the Kat Island! Nevertheless I was pleased to encounter one local sea-going bird within a day of arriving on Kauai.  The white-tailed tropicbird has probably been visiting since before the original Polynesian settlers reached the Hawaiian archipelago almost a thousand years ago.  Li...