The Role of Introduced Diseases in the Extinction of the Endemic Hawaiian Avifauna

James Clapper, a long-time resident of Kauai and a student of Hawaiian natural history, has spent many years in and about the native forests of the islands.He reports that these winter movements were common knowledge to the early Hawaiians.During an interview on 6 September 1958 he described one such migration that occurred during a period of winter storms in 1920 that had brought rain to the semiarid region of Waimea, Kauai.A flock of drepaniids including several species was observed congregating in an introduced Hibiscus hedge that was blooming at the side of the road.The birds were feeding on the flowers.Some of the birds were red, others yellow.The flock numbered at least SO.The bills of some were . . .' long and decurved, like that of the curlew, and at least two inches long ., .," certainly the now rare Kauai Akialoa, Hemignathus procerus.First ob- Condor, Vol.70 1968, Iss. 2, Art. 1 https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/condor/vol70/iss2/1depending upon local climatic and geographic circumstances, and on the low, isolated, and mosquito-free leeward islands of Nihoa and Laysan.The more ubiquitous species, such as the Iiwi and Apapane, still range over large areas of the high forests of the main islands.Others, such as the Kauai Ou, are for reasons as yet undetermined now confined to quite small portions of the relatively undisturbed high forests.