Hawai’i Birds – Part I

I had high hopes, once here, of snagging lots of bird photos but Hawai’ian birds turned out to be surprisingly difficult to capture. I mean photograph, but I imagine capturing them would also be difficult. Almost every bird I see is either in motion or about to be in motion. I have lots of blurry photos and empty frames. 

What follows is a sampling of all the bird photos I’ve shot and are halfway decent and I’ve not yet published. You can click on the photos and a larger version will open up in another window. You can also go to THIS SmugMug Gallery or enjoy the gallery at the end of the post. The galleries contain thirty-one photos, but I’ll only post a few here (more than twenty and less than thirty-one).

This is The Pacific Golden-Plover (Kolea) . . . 

This next bird looks a lot like the Kolea, but notice the yellow legs; it’s the Ruddy Turnstone (‘Akekeke). Both of these birds are migratory species.

When we came here, I did a quick search of Hawai’ian birds and was disappointed there were no hummingbirds and no hawks. 

I was wrong about the hawks. 

That’s the Hawai’ian Hawk (‘Io) and I was lucky to have the camera in hand when this flew over the condo complex where we’re staying. I had to lean way over the railing to snap a quick set of photos. They are not great, but it’s all I got for now. 

This one is in it’s “light” color stage. I’ve only seen one (the one above) although I might have seen another one flying in the distance (too far to identify). 

The one bird that is all over the place is the Common Myna bird. The fact I see hundreds of these birds each day does not make them any easier to photograph. These shots were in the late evening as the sun was going down which accounts for the yellow-orange cast.  

There are also a ton of Yellow-Billed Cardinals around . . . and this next photo is one of the few halfway decent photos I’ve been able to get. They are constantly in motion and in the half a second it usually takes me to focus, they move on. 

I mentioned before that each sunrise we get serenaded by a cacophony of loud and repetitive bird calls. Add to that a new resident in the neighborhood. This guy is loud, its voice echoing among the buildings. 

The female is around but you seldom see her and I’ve not yet heard her. This guy Gobbles all the time. Read HERE about the various turkey vocalizations.

The other day, I got lucky during one of our walks . . . I had my camera and birds actually sat still for a little bit. 

That’s a Red Finch and a Japanese White Eyes. 

The interesting thig was that these two seemed to fly as a pair, going from branch to branch of this particular tree.

Later on during the same walk, a different Japanese White Eye. 

The highlight of our walk was a small flock of Red-crowned Amazon Parrots descending on a tree ahead of us. We have these birds near the condo as well, but while we hear their loud screeches, we usually only see the flock moving at high speed from one place to another. 

These next three shots are not in the galleries because they are pretty bad, shot in low light as the birds flew past about fifty yards from our balcony. The shots are here for reference only. 

But this time, they were perched and eating and I had my P900 . . . 

They seem aware of people with cameras and do their best to provide no clear shot . . . but I am clever and they know not the awesome zoom I can bring to bear . . . 

The photo is not as clear as I would like because it was overcast and the lighting was poor. Still, all in all, not too bad.

Notice it’s holding the seed pod it got from the tree and has ripped it open to get at the seeds. 

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll do another update when I get some more photos. There are a lot of different species of birds I would like to photograph . . . I just need to figure out where they are and how to get them to stand still for more than a second. 

Here is the gallery of all the photos:

Edited to Add: 
For them who might be interested, over the years I’ve been able to capture a few photos of birds. Most can be found here (keep scrolling for more):

http://ejdalise.smugmug.com/search/?q=bird&c=photos

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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