The AKIAPOLA'AU Hemignathus munroi, is one of the rarest of the endemic birds on the Big Island of Hawai’i. It is found only on this island, and only above 3,500 ft in the rain forest. Most of this area is inaccessible due to rugged terrain and/or protected refuges. This photo series was from the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge.

The Akiapola’au is a honeycreeper, but with a unique bill, making it feed more like a woodpecker. With bill wide open, it pecks with the lower mandible to open holes for sap and to find larvae. One the latter is found, it can hook the prey out with the very long and curved upper mandible.

The species is endangered, with only about 800 birds left (down from about 1,200 in 1995). It has succumbed not only to the direct pressures of man, through grazing and timber cutting, but through secondary threats introduced by man. Introduced rats and mongooses have had an effect. The greatest dangers, however are more subtle; mosquitoes and tree fungus. No endemic forest birds exist anymore below about 3,500 ft due to mosquitoes introduced in the mid-1800’s by trading ships. The Akiapola’au, and other endemic birds, has no resistance to the avian diseases carried by these pests. So far the mosquitoes are confined to the lower elevations, but as they evolve, they will likely fill the higher altitudes also, and spell the end of the few remaining endemic species.

Compounding all of this, the nature of the species is not helping in its own cause: •It lays only one egg per year, or every other year, placed on the top of a branch. •It is for the most part dependent on one tree, the Koa Acacia koa from which it extracts the larvae of one beetle.