September DAB-Day: Hawaiian Birds

As a tribute to Maui and the terrible fire that the people (and birds) there went through in August, we chose Hawaiian birds as the theme for this month’s Draw-a-Bird Day.

Jim shared this interesting tidbit from an article by Elizabeth Kolbert in the August 20 New Yorker (permission not sought or granted, but I’ve lived a good life outside of prison): “The ‘alalā, or Hawaiian crow, is a remarkably clever bird.  ‘Alalā fashion tools out of sticks, which they use, a bit like skewers, to get at hard-to-reach food. The birds were once abundant, but by the late nineteen-nineties their population had dropped so low that they were facing extinction. Since 2003, all the world’s remaining ‘alalā have been confined to aviaries. In a last-ditch effort to save the species, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has been breeding the crows in captivity. The alliance keeps about a third of the birds–some forty ‘alalā–at a facility outside the town of Volcano, on the Big Island, and the rest outside the town of Makawao, on Maui. Earlier this month, the Maui population was very nearly wiped out. On the morning of August 8th, flames came within a few hundred feet of the birds’ home and would probably have engulfed it were it not for an enterprising alliance employee, one of her neighbors, and a garden hose.”

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