The Garden Isle has an abundance of cool creatures & a few not so cool. The most infamous is the chicken “moa”. The feral chicken population of Kaua’i is estimated at 450,000 while humans are 75,000!
Depending on where you stay, it can make for some early awakening which is fine with us as we like to stay on PST to get stuff done early and catch the sunrise.
My wife found this poster at a restaurant & started taking pics of all the ones we could find. We didn’t see as many different ones as we had hoped but the sheer volume of chickens is impressive.
We had a cool visitor on our balcony that I had never seen before one morning, a white-rumped shama. The Hawaiian’s have no word for this bird as it is not native or a regular visitor until recently.
They do make for a good image though when hanging out in a plumeria tree…
One of the coolest birds we saw is the night heron “auku’u” which is native to Hawaii.
While it is common to see the adults, while paddling kayaks on the Hanalei river my wife caught my attention & said she saw something weird on the shore in the bushes. I paddled back to where she saw it and saw a bunch of bird droppings before seeing these little dinosaurs! I thought they were leftovers from the nearby filming of Jurassic Park before realizing they were baby night herons.
On the same paddle we saw a common bird here, the cattle egret “kaʻiʻo kū holo” which were introduced to reduce pests on the cattle. It is not uncommon to see them sitting on cattle eating bugs.
The official state bird, the Nēnē goose is a regular on the Hanalei river.
The river seemed to have an abundance of fresh water turtles “honu” which are NOT natives.
On the other side of the island you will see the protected local sea turtles that can attract a crowd and much unwanted attention.
When they come ashore on Poʻipū beach, a popular tourist beach, they are roped off to a VIP section to protect them from dumb tourists getting too close to take pics or touch them (a big NO NO!). I took these pics with a long telephoto from a very good distance.
The other highly protected beach visitor is the monk seal “īlio holo i ka uaua” which in Hawaiian translates to “dog that runs on water”.
We were fortunate enough to see two resting on a beach in Kapa’a.
I was going to include fish in this post but it is getting a little long so will save that for another time. Have a great Sunday!
…TIL…several things…so thank you…rooster is definitely not a word that springs to mind when I think about volcanic island paradise(s) for one
…&…seals & dogs…I can see it…but wouldn’t have guessed the nod would go to an earless variety…not sure how they’d measure up for scale but most of the seals I’ve seen were in waters so cold the fact they looked like it didn’t bother them makes it hard to believe they could get beach fit for hawaii…probably burn a lot of calories on the way over though so I guess you never know…& dog-type things are known to be fond of finding a spot to flop out in in the sunshine…totally makes sense
…also didn’t know herons came in dark mode…which is frankly very cool
…good thing you see this stuff & not me because I am way too slow on the draw & not nearly good enough with a camera to shoot a fraction of this…so…as ever…uh…mahalo?
…am I saying that right?
Fine job on the “mahalo”. Monk Seals are the only ones in Hawaii & highly protected.
https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/dar/hawaiian-monk-seal/#:~:text=It%20is%20currently%20estimated%20that,Main%20Hawaiian%20Islands%20(MHI).
…forget evolution…I reckon if you want to make an argument for divine intervention over darwinian evolution you just need a god that would say to a seal off some hebridian island you might not even count on a map if it wasn’t a nautical chart…or some frigid fjord somewhere…”if you don’t like it I’ll swap you the ears for a spot in hawaii?”
I’m surprised Kaua’i Fried Chicken didn’t take off there.
Keep noted internet morons the Paul Brothers away from the turtles. They accosted a bunch of sea turtle habitats in Puerto Rico to the dismay of locals and scientists.
I think I’ve mentioned this before but I’ve only been to Hawai’i once. The resort we stayed at encompassed a little plot of land, fenced off from interlopers and open to the Pacific. The turtles used it for breeding.
I was told by the on-site cultural ambassador (yes, I took some basic Hawai’ian lessons) that this was a turtle colony and it was presided over by what the humans called King Turtle. He was an enormoous beast and was thought to be at least 90 years old (even Keith Richards isn’t that old) and probably birthed all the other turtles and their forebears.
The Habsburgs had nothing on King Turtle. Incest was not a taboo in that set.
Love the night herons. Thanks for posting this.