Tuesday, March 1, 2011

For the Birds

The other day, I was up on the second floor looking out over my beautiful city, thinking about what I was going to eat for lunch.
Which is about the hardest decision I have to make every day.
Lunch I mean.
Anyways, I looked down at the lawn for something caught my eyeballs, something you don't usually see around these parts:



Two yellow birds!
Wow!
Now you might be thinking, two yellow birds, big deal!
Well it is sort of a big deal for whatever yellow birds we once had here on the island are no more.
Okay, we got some yellow birds over on the other islands, but they are few and far between.
See the yellow birds were all hunted down to near extinction by the locals for their feathers, sort of like the ones the dudes are wearing here.
Most of the birds with yellow and red feathers were captured for their feathers and used to make cloaks and hats and things for Hawaiian royalty.
Hence, no more red and yellow birds.
Now these birds, as far as I can tell, may or may not be native.
I say may or may not for it seems some yellow canaries have been spotted around town and these may be some of them.
Or they may be some native species making a comeback.
Tell you the truth, I've seen canaries and these two look a bit large for canaries:



I'm going to try and get to the bottom of all this yellowness and let you, the reader know.
If they are a native species making a comeback, well, they got a long hard road ahead.
From my morning pit stop:





Now that right there, that's a lot of birds!
So many birds in fact, it reminds me of the movie The Birds(written by Daphne du Maurier!), that Hitchcock classic where the birds go crazy and start attacking folks for no good reason:



So many birds in fact that it gives me the creeps just looking at them.
Then again, maybe they might not be so creepy if they were all yellow birds.
I mean yellow birds make me think of Big Bird, the humungasoid bird of Sesame Street.
Boy I bet you could make a lot of capes out of one Big Bird!
Anyways, he's not creepy at all.
Well, unless you're like five years old.
Then I'd say he could be creepy.
Maybe creepy in a good way.
If there is such a thing.
Anyways, that's my fauna report for the month.
Which after reading it again, is sort of for the birds.

5 comments:

Big Oak said...

If you can, try to find out what those birds are. As you mentioned, the Islands' native bird populations have been devastated by over-hunting, habitat loss, and the introduction of non-native and invasive species. It would be really cool if those are, in fact, native species.

As we are nearing the end of winter here, migrating birds are slowly beginning to come back. Some, who nest in northern Canada, have already come through and left.

TrevorW�� said...

It would be great if these were a native species making a comeback.
They do look very canary like - although most canaries that I have seen seem to have longer tail feathers - not that I am any kind of canary expert.

John Romeo Alpha said...

I think I know what those yellow birds are! They are---stay tuned.

Andrew Cooper said...

Saffron Finch (Sicalis flaveola), not a native, originally from South America

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffron_Finch

limom said...

AC, I thought maybe finches, but they looked sort of big.
Maybe zebra dove sized.
For sure larger than common brown sparrow.