Category: Birdwatching

_{This YouTube video was produced by the American Bird Conservancy.}

The big, black Double-crested Cormorant is a common waterbird of lakes and shorelines throughout North America. Although it is an expert fisher, its feathers lack the waterproofing common to most other waterbirds, such as the Mallard or Common Loon. Unlike these waterbirds, Double-crested Cormorants don’t have well-developed uropygial glands, which produce the waterproofing oil that birds spread over their feathers as they preen. Consequently, the Double-crested Cormorant has to spend a lot of time drying out, and it can often be sighted atop a piling, jetty, or dock with its

_{This YouTube video was produced by the American Bird Conservancy.}

The Nēnē is one of at least five species of geese that evolved on Hawaiʻi, including the Nēnē Nui (wood-walking goose) and the flightless Giant Hawaiʻi Goose. Today, the Nēnē is the only survivor, and one of the rarest goose species in the world. Based on fossil DNA, these Hawaiian geese are closely related to the Canada Goose, which was thought to have migrated to the islands over 500,000 years ago.

Another interesting group of waterfowl, the moa-nalos (lost fowl), once inhabited most of the Hawaiian Islands, but were quickly

_{This YouTube video was produced by the American Bird Conservancy.}

The ʻAlawī is a small, inconspicuous Hawaiian honeycreeper, so unassuming in appearance that the first scientists who collected it didn’t even realize that this bird was a unique species. Researchers only made the connection between the Hawaiian name “ʻAlawī” and the bird described as the Hawaiʻi Creeper in 2017. The Kumulipo, the Hawaiian cosmological and genealogical chant, mentions the ʻAlawī as a “child” of the ʻAlalā (Hawaiian Crow), and other traditional Hawaiian epics refer to it as a small, quick bird.

While the ʻAlawī may lack the bright colors or