Lesser ʻakialoa
species of bird
The lesser ʻakialoa (Akialoa obscura) is an extinct species of Hawaiian honeycreeper in the subfamily Carduelinae of the family Fringillidae. It was endemic to the island of Hawaiʻi. It became extinct due to habitat loss and disappeared at around the same time as its Oʻahu relative.
Description
It was a yellowish bird with a two-inch-long thin whitish-yellow bill. It had small olive green wings which it used to flit from tree to tree to look for insects like beetles and caterpillars.
Behavior
It was seen gleaning the trees in search of insects. The bill of the ʻakialoa was also designed for more than bug extraction. The ʻakialoa also fed on nectar in the flowers of lobeliads and lehua blossoms. Its long bill could easily fit into petals of long flowers and took pollen from flower to flower on its forehead. It was collected at several places.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lesser ʻakialoa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.