The Akikiki Honeycreeper
Oreomystis bairdi
My life at home
I am an Akikiki Honeycreeper. Fun fact, I am also known as the Kaua’i Creeper. We are small birds. My kind are known for having a gray colored body with white toned stomachs. We have short and slightly curved pale pink beaks. My friends and family, or our kind like to travel in pairs or groups of 3-4. But now that there aren't that many left of us, we travel with our friends that are different breeds. Like the ‘Anianiau, ‘Akeke’e and lastly the Kaua’i Amakihi. When we travel with them we usually pair up in a large flock of about 8-12.
My home is the highest elevation of the native rainforests of Koke’e State Park and the Alaka’i Wilderness Preserve on Kauai. We eat small insects, seeds, etc. and sometimes (rarely) we enjoy nectar. But, it’s pretty rare for us to eat nectar. I guess you could say our main source of food is small insects like beetles, caterpillars, and other small insects on the bark and leaves of trees.
We are critically extinct. Our current population is estimated to have less than 500 of us!! So, there aren’t that many left of us. It all happened when mosquito-borne diseases like avian pox or avian malaria came to the species. The two diseases are decimating the species. Not only just our kind the “akikiki”, but other honeycreepers are affected by it as well.
Ancestory
The akikiki honeycreepers like me and other honeycreepers adapted from the common rosefinch. In study, the rosefinches were the closest relative to us. Researchers found that the rosefinches came to the Hawaiian Islands about 7.2-5.8 million years ago. Slowly as years passed we evolved into honeycreepers.
As I said we evolved from the common rosefinches. Because of adaptive radiation, this was able to happen. When the rosefinches came to the islands of Hawaii, they started to form new appearances and slowly turned into the different honeycreepers today. Isn’t it amazing what life can do?
Sources
Lerner, H., Meyer, M., James, H., Hofreiter, M., & Fleischer, R. (2011). Multilocus Resolution of
Phylogeny and Timescale in the Extant Adaptive Radiation of Hawaiian Honeycreepers.
Current Biology, 21 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.09.039
Dickie, Gloria. “The Birds and the Bugs: Trying to Save Hawaii's Akikiki and Akeke'e • The Revelator.” The Revelator, The Revelator, 27 June 2017, therevelator.org/birds-bugs-hawaii-akikiki-akekee/.
Conservancy, American Bird. “'Akikiki.” American Bird Conservancy, abcbirds.org/bird/akikiki/.
Jeffrey T. Foster, Paul W. Sykes Jr. J. Michael Scott. “Akikiki.” Aplomado Falcon - Introduction | Birds of North America Online, Birds of North America, 1 Jan. 2000, birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/akikik/introduction.