MARCH 2021 | VOL.

29

HONEYCREEPER NEWS
Written By Liliana Peeves

More great reads

inside this issue: The Words from a Dying Species
WRITTEN BY MARCELINE ANDERSON
ALL ABOUT I'IWE
My name is Rea. I am a part of the honeycreeper family, a ʻAkohekohe AKA Crested
Honeycreeper to be exact. My species evolved from a common ancestor throughout
time. My species is native and still found on Maui, Hawaii in the East Maui Watershed at
around elevations of four-thousand to seven-thousand feet. We usually grow to be
around seven inches with black base feathers with orange and gray spots. Also, the
backs of our necks are orange; we have small curled feathers above our beaks. We are
called ʻAkohekohe because of the sound that we emit which humans compare to a low
chuckle. There aren't too many of us left as the humans have put us on their
endangered animals list. There are around 1200 of my kind left, which is a small number
if you do think about it. The main reason we are slowly going extinct is because of the
invasive species of plants and animals that were brought over by humans over time.
 MARCH 2021 | VOL. 29

More great reads Our habitat has been changed by these variables in different ways such as having
invasive plants grow, choking out the native ones and giving us a smaller food supply;
inside this issue:
things like deer, pigs and goats also ate our food source, limiting it even more.
Speaking of what we eat, our diet consists of native plants like the Ohia Lehua tree. If
these trees are unavailable at the time, we will eat insects or fruit from other plants.
HOW THE PO'OULI Because of the invasive species invading my habitat I have less food to eat as it is
WENT EXTINCT becoming more scarce over time. My habitat doesn't look the same anymore, with
strange plants choking our precious Ohia trees and other animals eating them. We
already went extinct on Molokai and we want to prevent that happening on Maui,
making us cease to exist.

How We Came to Hawaii

WRITTEN BY MARIANA POTTER

The story of how the many different species of Honeycreeper
came to be has been passed down by my ancestors over
many generations. Let me tell you how it all went down. A
long time ago there was a species of birds called the
Rosefinch that came from a far away land dragged to these
islands by a storm.
When this happens to a species, the humans call it a founder
effect. Each group of Rosefinches that ended up on a
different island ended up evolving things like their
appearances, what they eat, etc. so that they could survive.
With the process of natural selection and the bottlenose
effect, over time the Rosefinches evolved so much that they
started to become many different sets of species and made
themselves unable to reproduce with Honeycreepers that
were not a part of their specific species. When my ancestors
crashed on the island they ended up adapting so they could
survive better and over time becoming the many diverse
species of Honeycreepers that are here today. If you look at
an old photo of a Rosefinch then you can see the way that I
evolved. My species grew to have longer, thinner beaks over
time so that we can eat nectar in plants as well as develop
different colored plumage so that we could blend in with our
environment better. A word my ancestors used when telling
us this story was pilina. Pilina translates to connection and
relationship. My elders used this word to describe my
connection to my ancestors, the way that all Honeycreepers
are connected with one another through our family.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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THE WEBSITE OF EVERYTHING. “CRESTED HONEYCREEPER.”
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