Thursday 22 January 2009

Birding Honolulu




....Airport. We had a relatively short lay over in Honolulu on the island of O'ahu, made much more tolerable due to the presence of a rather nice garden area within the terminal. In the time between disembarking our picturesque Hawaiian Airlines flight (great views of the other islands!) and giving in to one more Kona Brewary beer and steak I managed another three species for the holiday list:

Red-crested cardinal - similar to the yellow-billed seen on the Big Island, a few of these birds were feeding on the lawn area. This species was introduced in 1930 from South America.

Two bulbul species were seen - red-vented and red-whiskered. Of the two species, red-vented appeared more dominant in the pecking order and was observed chasing the red-whiskered on several occasions. RVB was introduced from Asia in the mid 1950's while RWB was introduced around 1965.

In addition to the new species there were a couple of spotted dove, zebra dove, Japanese white-eye, house sparrow, java sparrow and common myna.

2 comments:

oldcrow61 said...

Lucky you, what gorgeous birds you were able to photograph.

John Malloy said...

They certainly did brighten up an airport transfer!