Hawaii's birds are rare sight

WAIMEA, Hawaii — Bird calls ricochet among the trees in a patch of native forest on Mauna Loa's lower slopes, but the birds themselves are so evasive we sometimes spend minutes scanning the towering koa canopy to glimpse even a flicker of their small shadows.

Binoculars go up as a far-off silhouette wings closer and lands on a branch overhead. The bright red bird with a slender, curved bill, an i'iwi, matches the coloring of the pom-pom-shaped lehua blossoms whose nectar it sips. The i'iwi perches for less than a minute, then launches off the branch and flits away on black-edged wings.

Although i'iwi birds are common during winter, "today they are one of our target birds," said our birding guide, Garry Dean.

Dean leads birdwatching groups on the Big Island for the Hawaii Forest and Trail tour group. He recognizes a variety of Hawaiian bird calls and can identify a species by its characteristic movements, talents that come in handy when a bird is backlit by the sun or partially blocked by foliage.

Dozens of bird species once filled the formerly thick forests of the Hawaiian Islands before logging, cattle ranching and feral animals introduced in the last two centuries — such as European boars, sheep and goats — razed and uprooted most of the birds' habitat.

But now 28 percent of Hawaii's 93 native bird species are extinct and another one-third are listed on the federal threatened and endangered species lists, according to figures released in 2000 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Guided tours, while not cheap at $155, can help the novice birdwatcher search for these rare creatures, many of them fast-moving and others just a few inches high.

Our Rainforest and Dryforest Birdwatching Adventure tour begins at the western end of the serpentine Saddle Road, so named because it traverses the saddle between the massive volcanic peaks of Mauna Kea (white mountain) and Mauna Loa (long mountain).

Our first "target species," Dean tells us, will be the pueo, or Hawaiian short-eared owl, found throughout the islands. The diurnal owl likes to sit on fence posts or the rocky outcrops of old cinder cones now domed and covered with tall grass.

"There's one!" someone in the van yelps. Dean brakes and reverses to line us up with a pueo sitting on a fence post. Later we see another flapping in the distance, searching for rodents in the yellowed grass. I end up seeing 11 pueo over the course of the day. I was born and raised in Hawaii, but having spent most of my life in urban Honolulu, these are the first native owls I've seen.