While strolling through the (Ala Moana) park in the very, very month of April, I came across a pair of birds that I didn't recongize. Since I had a digital camera handy I was able to take a few shots of this bird. Anyone got any idea what kind of bird this is? It was slighty larger than the pigeons.
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The Birds
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Re: The Birds
They're 'auku'u, a.k.a. black crowned night herons. They were probably looking for fish and/or 'a'ama crabs. Funny little guys, aren't they?Last edited by Glen Miyashiro; April 30, 2004, 07:27 PM.
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Re: The Birds
Wow, Glen! A birdwatcher, are you?
Here's a page on the black crowned night heron from the Honolulu Zoo. And here's a photograph on the LCC website by one Peter Kun Frary.
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Re: The Birds
Those are such delightful birds! Very clever, too. They hang around waiting for people to throw bread into the water for the fish and then they swoop down and come up with a fish in their mouths. One of them is very greedy and often has a difficult time swallowing the catch. (They swallow them, live of course, head first, and then sit and gulp for a few minutes before starting to look for another one.)
At Ala Moana there are at least three of them, and they hang around by the pond at the DH end during the day, at sunset usually move to the other end of the park and continue waiting for the bread-throwers.
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Re: The Birds
I visited Magic Island at least 3 times this week at different times of the day but I haven't seen the herons since then even though I make it point to cross the bridge where I first saw them.
What really surprised me is that I spotted a chicken roaming around in the park. URL below is a photo:
http://www.hawaiistories.com/gallery/album35/Pcdv0026
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Re: The Birds
Found the 3rd heron while passing thru the bridge. This one is bluish while the other 2 were brown. I didn't see it catch a fish but it was trying to eat one and I was able to photograph a good number of shots. The thumbnail is part of the photograph taken. The entire image and others are at:
http://www.hawaiistories.com/gallery/album35Attached Files
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Re: The Birds
Went to Magic Island today to attempt to film the sunset but when I got to the R/C Boat Pond there was at least 6 herons, 3 of them sported blue and white coloring, 1 was brown and 2 were stripped brown.
There was a group of people throwing bread into the water to attact the fish closer to the shore so that the herons could catch it. One of the birds got a fish but it later dropped it.
Took a lot of images, if I find any good ones I will post to the HawaiiStories gallery. And yeah I missed the sunset but watching these birds in action was interesting.
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Re: The Birds
Sunday's encounter was pretty interesting. One of the herons already had a big fish in it's bill. It had dropped the fish a couple of times and the fish was alive enough to splash in the water but only to be caught again by the heron.
I am just wondering how come the heron is not bright enough to move a couple of feet inland after catching the fish.
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Re: The Birds
I guess those herons got an ISP and was reading HawaiiThreads.com because one of them today after catching a fish moved about 3 to 4 feet inland and started to eat the fish. During the process it had dropped the fish and since it was on a slope the fish managed to tumble down to the pond to escape being dinner for the heron.
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