I Found RARE Birds in Hawai'i That Almost Nobody Sees

[00:00:00]In this video, [music] I spend three more days exploring the island of Havi, searching for some of the rarest birds on Earth. Along the way, we see plenty of rare birds while sea watching and travel to faraway parts of the island in search of some incredible birding spectacles. Come with me on this journey and let's see what birds we can find.

[00:00:24]Good morning from sunny well kind of sunny Hawaii. We are currently out here at about 5:30 in the morning and we're trying to seawatch. The only problem is let me show you. The conditions are not ideal. It's storming.

[00:00:41]It's wet and it's raining. We're going to see if we can find absolutely anything on these shores this morning.

[00:00:47]Then we'll move on to the next spot.

[00:00:48]Hopefully the rain dies down. But unfortunately, it looks like it might be a little rough today. Stick with me.

[00:00:54]Let's see what birds we can find.

[00:00:55]Currently sea watching right now, and it's actually getting insane out here.

[00:00:58]>> Things finally cleared out and we're able to get birds on camera. First new lifer. Black naughty. Obviously, the views are going to be very distant.

[00:01:06]You're going to see a dark bird flying over the ocean. Black naughty is the first one of our trip here. Second one is a Hawaiian endemic. The birds that I'm trying to see, Hawaiian petrol. I can't believe it. Hawaiian petrol out over the water. It's the one with the light underneath its body. Just sitting here with a scope and sea watching.

[00:01:25]Let's see what else we can find.

[00:01:26]Something that I want to reiterate is that sea watching is extremely difficult. In fact, we've been sitting out here for a long time and we actually don't think we have Hawaiian petrol, which is unfortunate because that's the one you'd want to get in Hawaii. What we do have though is my lifer wedge tailed sheer water. We kept getting that confused with Hawaiian petrol and you know some of these birds we haven't looked into at all because we've never been in the area to be able to see them.

[00:01:52]So we got a nice wedge tailed shear water actually a whole bunch of wedtailed shear waters. Also black naughties out on the water as I mentioned before. Unfortunately though I don't think we have a Hawaiian petrol.

[00:02:05]I'll go back through the footage and everything but this is really really really hard. uh you're basically taking blurry photos of birds way out on the water and it's not always ideal for identification. So we will hope that a few more birds come closer to shore and hope that we pick up a few more species.

[00:02:20]But overall it's been good. A couple lifers in the black naughties and the wedge tail sheer waters. But >> small black bird flying left.

[00:02:28]>> Small black bird flying left. Left >> below horizon line.

[00:02:32]>> We meet.

[00:02:33]>> All right.

[00:02:34]>> See you in a second. What was really exciting were these views of Naa, also known as the Hawaiian spinner dolphin.

[00:02:40]These were beautiful creatures and we absolutely couldn't believe our luck in being able to observe these playful creatures from land.

[00:02:51]Crazy thing just happened. So Caleb and I went down looking for, you know, we got a little bit bored of sea watching.

[00:02:56]So we walked all the way down to the beach looking in the rocks for certain, you know, little critters, right? For inat. We ended up finding a cool little fish or two. Allison screams, "Booby, I have a booby." We ran all the way back up to the pavilion and we got a lifer.

[00:03:12]Masked booby. Any views you're going to get out on sea from shore are not going to be amazing, but you can definitely tell what it is watching the video. It has that dark tail that is indicative of a masked booby. That is another lifer. A bird that I had no I didn't think we were going to get that. Honestly, I didn't think we were going to get half of the birds that we just got today. Sea watching. Wow, that's absolutely incredible. We're going to wrap it here sea watching and we're going to go look for some more of the Hawaiian endemics.

[00:03:40]This is our big hike day into the tropical forests of Hawaii to try to find the EU and a few of the other species. Wow, what a way to finish off the sea watch. Let's see what other birds we can find.

[00:03:59]Not yet.

[00:04:08]>> All right, everybody. Back at another location. We're on the Pu O Trail. And this is our best chance at getting pretty much the rest of the endemics.

[00:04:16]We've got to try to see the Eway. This is going to be a good spot to try to find those. A moa, which we've heard but haven't seen. We also need to try to get the Akeepa, which is going to be the hardest. That one's in Hakalao, which is a closed national wildlife refuge that you can only get into if you pay a substantial amount of money to get a guide, which I totally understand, but they have been seen down here in the past. So, it's possible, slim chance.

[00:04:42]Also, the Ak Palao is another endemic that we're trying to get. I'm here again obviously with Caleb. Allison, you will see in the video, I promise. But she's actually volunteering and doing an internship at an animal rescue that deals with birds. So, we just dropped her off there, but we'll see her again in the evening. She was the clutch piece of us getting that mass booby. So, an incredible day so far. Three lifers, black naughty, wedge tailed, sheer water, masked booby, and now we're heading into this volcanic forest to try to find the rest of our endemics. Eio as well, the Hawaiian hawk. Let's see if we can get these birds. To be honest, I haven't really been filming that much because it's been raining the entire time on this hike so far. We did, however, pick up another lifer and another endemic species. Omeo.

[00:05:38]I keep mispronouncing it, an omo. And the bird was really far away. So, unfortunately, not the best of views.

[00:05:45]I'll throw a picture up on screen.

[00:05:46]Hopefully, we get better views of the Omaha. There was a whole bunch calling in here earlier. But right now, we're in this thick thick tropical Hawaiian forest just with some really cool plants. We've been logging a lot of plants on I naturalist. And we also got really good views of another amakihi. So amakihi's obviously been the most abundant endemic species here on the island of Hawaii. Of course that's the Hawaiian Amakihi because there's other amis on other islands. But we're going to continue walking in this forest.

[00:06:16]We're still looking for our ebe just a whole honestly a whole bunch of aka palao bunch of other species. So let's see if we can pick these up. We have another day here though if we can't and I'm just really hoping we get it. Also some bad news. Our pelagic trip was cancelled. It wasn't going to be a birding pelagic, unfortunately. We couldn't swing that. We couldn't afford that. It was really expensive. So, we did a whale watching tour into the pelagic zone and it got cancelled. So, the sea watching is going to have to come in clutch. Obviously, getting a mass booby is incredible. But hopefully, we can get Hawaiian petrol now. That we thought we had it this morning, it wasn't. Let's see what we can get. The air felt more like mist and the ground was soaked with the rain of the day. We continued down the Puo Trail, entering thick Kapuka forests and gaining a bit of refuge from the steady downpour of the rain. The forest was oddly quiet, but any movement quickly caught our attention and kept us on edge. The thick forest made views of the birds difficult to come by, and we struggled to see things as they dashed around in the canopy above.

[00:07:24]Well, every single trip to a birding destination has one day that's a little bit tougher than the rest. This hopefully is that day. We still got some incredible lifers this morning at the sea place. But unfortunately, we are at the end of our journey out here into the rainforest. Way out there beyond the horizon is where we need to go to get a palao.

[00:07:52]So, unfortunately, we are going to have to turn around. We got to pick up Allison from work, but we're not going to give up on the Eway. We could still see it on the way back, of course. We're not going to give up on the Aka Palao either. Friday, we're going to get here at like 5:00 a.m. And we're going to go deep, deep into that rainforest, and we're going to stay there for the entire day until we got to go pick up Allison from her internship. So, stick with us.

[00:08:17]This adventure is not over. Obviously, we still have the walk back. And then probably tonight, whatever we do, and then probably a whole another day tomorrow. We'll see how these videos work out. But it's unfortunate. We did go on a pretty long tre for it. Good views of the Amakihi, of course, pretty subpar views of the Omeo.

[00:08:36]And also too, we don't have pretty much any footage of anything else while we were in here. So, we're going to turn around, try to get more footage. It's hard when it's raining, but I'll stick with me. We're going to bounce back like we always do.

[00:08:49]>> Oh, >> no.

[00:08:50]>> I'm terrible. I'm a terrible YouTuber.

[00:08:54]>> Craziest story just happened. So, we went to go pick up some food, right? And also, we went to go pick up Allison, who's finally in the video, and Allison's the one who made all this possible. So, so special thanks to Allison. We could not have done that without her. And she spotted the mass booby today, which is incredible. But anyways, we are literally just talking, waiting for our food at this, you know, local restaurant just down the street from where we're staying. And boom, right up in the air. Ew. I literally can't believe it. That is one of the endemic species I wanted to see the most. You can only find them on the island of Hawaii, unless they've like migrated, I guess, is what I what I've heard from other people. But wow. Eu.

[00:09:37]Another endemic on the list. It's one of the most iconic birds in Hawaii on the Hawaiian Islands. And I literally cannot believe it. So sometimes you just need to go get yourself some food, relax, and the birds will come to you. We really did not see any sightings of EU in our area until we just spotted them right now. So incredible to see those birds.

[00:09:57]Caleb and I sprinted across the road to go get that. In fact, check out this clip that Allison took with her phone real quick.

[00:10:03]>> Alison, back.

[00:10:09]Jordan, >> he's running to get his camera.

[00:10:13]>> There's no way.

[00:10:15]>> There it is.

[00:10:22]Oh, I don't know if they're going to get this bird, man. It's It's dipping down.

[00:10:29]>> And yes, we got the bird. So, yes, another life on the list. And a beautiful beautiful hawk species. We got photos. We got video. I am so happy to be able to feature that bird for you guys on the channel. All right, so we're sea watching again at the same spot that we were sea watching this morning after getting the EOS. We were super hyped, but very tired after today. A lot of walking, not a lot of birds. It's amazing to finish things off with an EO.

[00:10:52]Looking out here into the ocean again using the scope. Ended up getting the Hawaiian petrol finally. They don't have any footage of it unfortunately because I was focused on filming the a masked booby, which is probably the same masked booby that we got this morning. Possibly a different one. There's a lot of boobies out here actually, which hopefully I don't get demonetized for that. But really awesome to see that mass booby one more time. And then getting the Hawaiian petrol. I'll try to throw a screen grab up on there of a photo that I took or if Caleb has a better photo, I'll try to pull one from Caleb. But yeah, we have Hawaiian petrol, one of the endemic birds to Hawaii, native birds to Hawaii. So pretty awesome to see that. We ended up getting Bullworth sheer water which I don't have any media of because it was so far out to see >> and I also got redfooted booby three of them also way out there to see. So if any of these birds come in close I will obviously show them to you >> in the next couple days. But for now just know that I got these awesome birds sea watching and >> the sun's going down so we might be wrapping things up in a moment. still and I don't know this to be true of this visit, but like in the east where you're at usually they're like swallow flight or like >> Good morning everybody from Kakoa Beach.

[00:12:09]Today we are sea watching once again.

[00:12:12]Unfortunately though, the conditions are not good by some miracle. We got perfect conditions for sea watching yesterday where we got a whole bunch of sheer waters, even the Hawaiian petrol later in the afternoon and all of the different species of booby. We are going to head to another spot, but before we do so, we did end up getting a first for Hawaii. Wandering tattlers. I've only seen this bird once or twice before, and that was in Oregon. So, to see this bird and get such great views is really incredible. Unfortunately, a little bit of the dark side of the island is also present here at the beach. There is a mongoose weaving its way through the rocks. And mongoose are part of the reason that a lot of the native species, especially something like the na na was decimated because mongoose and other introduced mammals easily hunt down some of these native species because they didn't evolve alongside these mammals and don't know how to prepare themselves to overcome them. So feral cats and mongoose and a few other things like rats and stuff are a big point for conservation to try to get rid of those mammals. so the native population of species can thrive once again. We're going to head to another location. I'm not sure where we're going, but today we are going to Kona, which is the main one of the main cities here on the island of Hawaii. So, let's head out and see what birds we can find today.

[00:13:35]>> There's a boat up here.

[00:13:39]>> Wait, is a fishing boat? Because that might be gold.

[00:13:42]>> I don't know what this thing to the left is, but there's one on the right.

[00:13:46]>> There's a sailboat and a tanker.

[00:13:48]>> Yes. And the tanker is huge and really far away.

[00:14:01][music] Welcome to Kona. Now, an absolutely beautiful city here on the island of Hawaii. It's probably there's two main uh two main areas on the island of in terms of population. You have Kona and you have Hilo. We were in Hilo earlier when we went to Volcano National Park.

[00:14:25]We're now in Kona. And I just ended up getting a lifer, our first lifer of the day today, a ruddy turnstone. It's just right behind me here on the rock. That's also a nemesis bird. That's a bird I've searched for in California. That's a bird I searched for in Utah. Yes, they have visited Utah. Never seemed to find it. I had to come all the way to Hawaii to get this nemesis bird. Another lifer on the list. Absolutely incredible ruddy turnstone. Let's see what else we can find out here. So, we've just been sea watching out here. Unfortunately, good weather is not good for sea watching.

[00:14:59]You want storms and stuff bringing stuff in. That's why we were so successful yesterday at the sea watch getting the various different species coming close to shore. The storm was pushing them towards us. And unfortunately, it's clear as day out here. There is some fishing vessels out here to the left, and there's a lot of dark birds flying around them. We I mean, I suspect they're black naughty, but there also city turns found around this area. And they're so far out there that getting footage is probably not going to happen.

[00:15:28]But it's really, really hot here. The we're on lava rock, which is really absorbing the heat. Our feet are cooking. It's going to be a hot day today. Other targets that we have on the day is Hawaiian coupoot. That's the coupoot native to Hawaii. Another endemic. Would love to see that and I'm pretty sure we're going to get that today. As well as just a few species that some of them we get back at home like black crown knigh heron. Some more exotics uh here like the there's some several species of parrots. In fact, today when we were driving to the sea watch, we got rosy face love bird which I just picked up in Phoenix. I had no idea they were also in Hawaii. We're going to continue and see what birds we can find. and I'm hoping to get a lot more stuff for you guys on camera. Let's see what's out there.

[00:16:10]We're now on a trail near Kona and we're looking for Hawaiian monk seal as well as a few other things like the Hawaiian coots. On this trail, I did get a lifer as well. I have been seeing it all trip, but I didn't want to tell you until I actually got it. I got my lifer spotted dove. This is another introduced species to the island of Hawaii, but it's a very, very beautiful dove with a unique patterning on the back of its neck.

[00:16:36]Really happy to find that finally get that bird on camera. It's been evading me. I just really haven't taken the time to film it yet. So, another lifer on the list. Let's head down this trail and see what we can find. So, we walked out into the water a little bit. It's really, really hot today. Really enjoying the shade of this tree here. We walked out into the shallows of the ocean here. I got my lifer, some type of lifer sea turtle. Label for the turtle will be up on the screen. Really, really cool. They were kind of all over the place, actually. I don't know how the footage will turn out in terms of you being able to see it, but you can definitely make out its shell shape. They'd stick their heads up every once in a while, but honestly, I never was able to catch them with their heads sticking out cuz it's like 2 seconds out of the water. So, really, really cool to pick up that sea turtle. I also got some type of angel fish on camera as well. Again, I'll try to label everything for you guys in the video, but really, really cool to see that. I'm pretty sure I saw this dude in Finding Nemo or something. So, we're gonna continue down this way. No sign of a Hawaiian monk seal yet, and I don't see any up on the beach, but we're going to hope for the best and hopefully we get some Hawaiian coots. So, come with me. Another lifer on the list for the day. We're not even to the Hawaiian coot spot yet. Pacific Golden Plver.

[00:17:49]Honestly, I wasn't expecting to be able to get that. As well as the ruddy turnstone. The summer is the worst time.

[00:17:56]This time of year in July is the worst time to get Pacific Golden Clover, to get ruddy turn. They are here, but they're not as abundant as they are in the winter and the spring and the fall and all those cooler months. So, Pacific Golden Clover on the list. It's just chilling out here on one of these rocky algae fililled sand bars. Good spot by Caleb as well. I wouldn't have seen it at all. We've got two lifers on the day and we've got a couple more hours in Kona to go. So, we're going to continue going, of course, to try to get a few more of these species down south from us. And then tomorrow, we spend the entire day searching for some of those endemic birds. I'm very excited. Let's see what we can find. Walking down the beach, I was extremely excited to get more views of one of my newest lifers, the ruddy Turnstone, [music] as it sifted through the mossy rocks on the edge of the water.

[00:18:49]We even got incredible views of a Pacific golden clover in breeding plumage. This was something I absolutely wanted to see and this beautiful creature was so cooperative [music] to us.

[00:19:05]We got great views of a wandering tattler. I've only seen this bird a handful of times during my birding journey, so I was grateful for this moment.

[00:19:14]Eventually, we arrived at the place where the sea and inlet pond were divided by a small beach. Immediately, we spotted a new bird for Havi, the blackcrowned [music] nigh heron. We also couldn't miss the absolute abundance of western cattle egrets, which were introduced to the island in 1959 by ranchers to try and keep insect populations down.

[00:19:35]Another lifer on the list. I knew we were going to be able to get this one here. Hawaiian coupoot just behind me here in the pond. You can see a little bit of a difference between it and our American coot back home. It has a very big white shield on its forehead. Just a gorgeous bird. You know, a coupoot is a coup, but it's really, really cool.

[00:19:55]There's some other cool things here at the wetlands, as you have probably already seen. But yeah, we got the Hawaiian coot on our life list. What a beautiful, stunning bird. And another lifer for the list. Uh the sand is really hot right now. It's like burning my feet. So, we're going to go into town and relax for a little bit. I'll keep you updated and see where we end up next. So, we just arrived at this pond and we also got Hawaiian black neck still. It's not its own species at the moment. It's a subspecies of black neck stilt, but it's very, very different.

[00:20:28]Honestly, it's got that black full hood cap on its head that comes down over its eyes or near its eyes. It's really, really beautiful. Was really hoping to see that bird. I don't know why. I just like collecting subspecies. But getting black neck still sills for the island.

[00:20:43]Absolutely incredible.

[00:20:53]So, we are currently in a pretty high elevation neighborhood above Kona looking for some corellas. And we did see them. They blew by. Unfortunately, did not get them on video or photos or anything. thing. We just saw him for like 3 seconds as they ripped through the trees. But we do got a lifer right over here. Red mast parakeet. In reality, that's a really really cool species. Uh obviously another introduced species and we did see some earlier flying over us at the beach, but actually got decent views of them. It is very foggy up here. It's raining, so not the clearest of views of this new lifer, but a new lifer nonetheless. So, another lifer on the list. Unfortunately, did not get the Corellas on camera, but we did get them. And there's a photo up there on the screen for you guys to reference. So, we're going to drive back or start heading back. We have a few more stops. Just know that we have an hour drive and we have like one or two targets that we're going to stop for. I will say that tonight we're going to be coasting the road near Dark looking for POS, which is the short- eared owl subspecies here in Hawaii. Let's see if we can get some more cool birds. I'm currently at a skate park and it's quite literally just a grassy field with some soccer goals and I just got two more lifers for my life list. We stopped here to get the chestnut-bellied sandrass.

[00:22:13]This is a bird native to Africa, northern Africa. I believe they were introduced to Hawaii for hunting purposes. That's how a lot of these birds got here. Actually, both of these species were introduced to Hawaii for hunting purposes that I just got. But the sang grass really like these plains.

[00:22:32]Whitey has a lot of diverse habitats on it. And one of the habitats are these rolling hills of grass. Just these massive grasslands. So at this skate park, the skate park's surrounded by these grasslands. The sand grouse like to hang out and they're just sitting over here. There's a group of like seven or eight just chilling in the field over here. And then out of the woods walked a gray Franklin. So, that was pretty cool to get the gray Franklin on camera. On Hawaii, there are two Franklin species, the black Franklin and the gray Franklin. We've gotten both of them this trip. They're pretty abundant. A lot of these birds were introduced for hunting purposes and that's what you see a lot of these introduced species are for hunting sport. So, the sand grouse on the list and the gray Franklin on the list as well. Just chilling over here.

[00:23:24]Also, I got really, really good views finally of the Eurasian skylark. That's a species we picked up in the first day that we were here on our way to see the pala. And if you haven't seen that video, make sure you go check it out.

[00:23:35]But yeah, Eurasian skylark. Also not ne native to Hawaii, but it was just here in these fields. It's really interesting how random some of these birds are. I just was at a Texico gas station filling up on gas and in the tree above the pumps were three rosyfaced love birds.

[00:23:59]We picked up those birds in Phoenix on our way to Arizona, but I've seen quite a few of them here as well in Hawaii.

[00:24:05]So, very interesting selection of birds on this island. A lot of lifers, but of course, a lot of them are not native to the island. We're going to watch these birds for a little bit. Caleb wants to try to get some photos of them. It's been a good day. Very hot, very long.

[00:24:23]Let's see what we can get.

[00:24:30]>> We're back for one more night of sea watching and we just wrapped things up.

[00:24:34]We were talking to some people, so I didn't want to vlog in front of them.

[00:24:38]But I ended up spotting my first sea spot of this trip, cuz these guys have been hard carrying the whole time. Brown booby. So, we got not only did we get mass booby and redfooted booby, but we also got brown booby. That is a lot of really cool birds. So, we got that. That was absolutely incredible. Obviously, we filmed a few more brown uh black naughties, I should say. And yeah, we're just having a great time. We're going to go road cruise right now. The sun's going down and we're going to look for pouo, which is a subspecies of shorty eared owl. Might be its own species in the future. Not sure where that's at in the books, but let's go look for a puo.

[00:25:17]I really want to see one. Oh, I forgot to mention, I also got my lifer Eva, which is the great frigate bird.

[00:25:26]The problem is here's the footage. It's a tiny dot in the sky. When you're looking at it through the scope, we can see it a little bit better. It was doing its behavior where it tries to steal food from another bird and unfortunately it was like miles out at sea. So, I can't get great views for you guys on that one. But yes, we got the Eva. We really wrapped up this day on a bang.

[00:25:47]Let's get a Puo and then tomorrow let's get some of the last endemics that we need for our list. Although we spent several hours cruising roads, we never found the Puo and this concluded our second to last day on the island.

[00:26:09]Oh yeah.

[00:26:11]>> Actually, was it you that tell me that they do that on purpose sometimes?

[00:26:14]>> Yeah, it's a protest.

[00:26:16]>> Welcome back everybody. It's another day in Hawaii and we are here walking a trail. Now, the birds that we have on our last day in Hawaii are endemic birds. We really want to see eive. We really want to see a palao. We really want to see a keeppa. We really want to see the Hawaiian creeper. So, let's head down this trail. We have quite the trek to get to the rainforest down here. And like I mentioned, it's very wet. So, I'm going to get this camera away. But stick with me. Today might be the craziest day of the trip. Caleb and I are on on a bit of an adventure right now. We have a pin for some of these endemic species, but we're doing a little bit of uh exploring to get to that pin. Uh I just slipped in the lava field and I busted my lip pretty bad. Uh also busted my hand. I'm not feeling good.

[00:27:14]But top lip is more busted. Didn't know the I think the bottom lip has blood from the top lip. But anyways, we have a little while to go. Hopefully, we can get these endemic species cuz if I just absolutely biffed it. Luckily, I saved the camera. I actually hit my lip on the camera. If we don't get these endemics and I just, you know, busted open my lip, that would suck extra. So, let's go and see what we can get.

[00:27:41]Something awesome came of this trip. We were able to get an omo on camera. one popped up onto a tree over here and we were able to get some clips. Of course, it's very cloudy today and and rainy like it has been for much of the week.

[00:27:57]But we've been hearing that bird for a long time and we just haven't seen it.

[00:28:01]So to get another Hawaiian endemic on camera is absolutely incredible. Mau on the list. Let's see if we can do this.

[00:28:07]But getting an omo, that's very exciting.

[00:28:16]We're currently in the rainforest and the Kipuka where some of these endemic species like the Eve, the Aopala are all found. We have not seen or heard one yet. And this forest is thick and really hard to get through. Let's see if we can track it down. There goes more.

[00:28:38]Uh Caleb, he's still moving. He's still moving.

[00:28:41]We've been trekking through this Kibuka rainforest for a couple hours at this point, but I'm really happy to say that we did hear Eway. We did hear Eway at least three of them. We haven't heard them in probably 10 minutes. But I am really happy to say that I got my best footage ever of I got my best footage ever of Mau. They came right in close. There was two of them. Now, something really interesting about a mauo is that they actually they'll sit on perch on branches and they'll quiver their wings. I got some of that behavior on camera. Just a beautiful, beautiful bird. And I got one isolated on the on the log over here.

[00:29:24]Just absolutely incredible creatures. So happy to finally get really, really good views of that bird and some decent photos as well. But we really want to get I really want to get the eway. Let's see if we can find it. We've heard three now. Let's see if we can get it on camera. Every Amakihi that flew into our sights made our hearts jump. There are so many endemic yellow birds and the Havaii creeper looks nearly identical [music] to the amakihi.

[00:29:47]But as far as we could tell, amakhis were everywhere, [music] but the others just were not.

[00:29:53]A flash of red got our hearts beating fast, but they were almost always a pane. Don't get me wrong, we were so grateful and excited to see these birds, too. But Eve's look so similar that we couldn't help but keep getting our hopes up to [music] try and see one.

[00:30:11]Finally, we spotted a bird climbing vertically up a tree. And I was so excited that we had found the havi creeper. But then I found out that Amakihi also act in this way. It's such a tough idea. Our spirits are a little bit low right now. And of course, we got great views of Omau, a few views of Amakihi, which are all over the place.

[00:30:31]Beautiful birds. We only caught a glimpse of Eive, which is amazing. I just of course love getting things on camera for you guys, especially with the amount of effort that we put in to get to that point. We walked several miles.

[00:30:45]Don't have a lot to show for it. So, not to mention me biffing it on the way over here and just the lip swelling up and everything. So, we'll see what we can find heading back out. I still have, you know, I'm still very very happy with being here in Hawaii and seeing all the amazing endemic species that we've seen and seeing all the amazing birds. It's It would just be always awesome to end off with a bang. So, we'll give things one more shot, one or two more shots.

[00:31:12]Also, we did get Hawaiian creeper, which is another really, really hard species.

[00:31:16]We could only hear it, though. So, again, not a bird we could get on camera. So, we'll see what happens moving forward. Also, it doesn't help that I'm going on about an hour and a half of sleep from last night. So, I'm not feeling very good. Let's move forward and see what's out there.

[00:31:34]>> Eva, Eva, let's go. Nice.

[00:31:43]Surprise, the video is not done yet. We have a 4-hour layover here in Honolulu.

[00:31:49]And there's a beautiful small mini garden here. So, I've already glimpsed some things that I haven't seen before this. It's really loud here, so I'll probably do a lot of this in voice over.

[00:32:01]Let's see if we can get any more lifers here in Honolulu. I'll keep you updated.

[00:32:05]Reflecting on my trip to Havi, I couldn't feel anything but grateful.

[00:32:09]Allison was the rockstar who invited us out, and I loved having Caleb with me throughout these adventures. But we do have three more lifers to discuss.

[00:32:19]One of the most abundant new birds in the airport was my lifer, red vented bulbble. These birds are not found on the island of Havi, but were introduced to Aahu and apparently love a trip to the airport. Another stunning introduced bird to Aahu is the redcrested cardinal.

[00:32:35]These birds were all over the airport and are slightly different in appearance from the yellow build cardinals we found all over Hawaii.

[00:32:43]But amazingly, we did find one native species in the airport garden and it was a really cool way to end the trip.

[00:32:52]So, some very exciting birds. Obviously, a few more lifers on the list of introduced species like the red crested cardinal and the black vented bubble.

[00:33:02]Both very beautiful bird species here at the airport. But, we do have a native species here at the airport. I bet you weren't expecting that. But we have a blue build white turn. This is something Caleb really wanted to see. And there's one sitting up in a tree right above me.

[00:33:17]Bluebuild white turn is native to some of the islands in Hawaii, if not just a wahoo, which is where we are right now at the airport. But yeah, we have one sitting up in the tree and apparently they lay their eggs right on a branch.

[00:33:30]So these birds, there's a pair of them, but I only have one on camera. These birds might be nesting in the Honolulu airport, which is pretty cool. But I'm going to wrap up the video. I am extremely exhausted. If you enjoyed watching these videos to Hawaii, please subscribe. We got some adventures coming up where we're going to California.

[00:33:57]Also, if you'd like to support my adventures because they're not cheap, I really appreciate it. Links to my merch or my membership program are in the description below. You can get access to besi behind the scenes content, interviews with Caleb on this trip, and a few other things as well. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. I hope to see you all next time on Brideeyed Birding.

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