Kioea

Narrow spring honey eater ( Chaetoptila angustipluma )

The narrow spring honeyeater or Kåñëa ( Chaetoptila angustipluma ) is a most likely extinct bird species of Hawaii that you previously then assigned to the family of honeyeaters. Because of new molecular genetic analyzes, it was found that the similarity with the honey -eaters only based on convergence and both Kåñëa and the Kraus tails are probably closer related to the waxwings the New World. Therefore, in 2008 the new family Mohoidae described.

Description

The length of the narrow spring honeyeater was 33 centimeters. The top was greenish brown, for the most part, the bottom had a dirty white coloration. The dark brown eyes were surrounded by a mask-like eye-streak. His name means Kåñëa in the Hawaiian language " leggy ".

Distribution and habitat

Its distribution was probably confined to the territory of the Kīlauea volcano on the largest island of Hawaii (Big Iceland ). Here he lived in mountain forests. Information that he also seemed to Molokai, presumably based on a confusion with the bristle curlew (Numenius tahitiensis ), which is also referred to as Kåñëa. 1978 discovered the paleontologist Yosihiko H. Sinoto in a cave at Barbers Point, Oahu, the fossil remains of a bird whose bones had great resemblance to those of the narrow spring honeyeater. Therefore, it is believed that at least seemed a subspecies on the island of Oahu.

Life and behavior

Over the life of the bird almost nothing is known. Like the other extinct Hawaiian honeyeaters, the Kraus tails, he lived in the trees and fed on nectar, insects and caterpillars.

Extinction

1840 were the two American naturalist Charles Pickering and Titian Ramsay Peale, the type specimen of the narrow spring honeyeater. 1859 yielded the bird collector James D. Mills recent confirmed evidence of this kind and imposed at Hilo, a larger number of individuals. Little is known about the reasons for his extinction. However, since he was considered a very rare even before the arrival of Europeans, it is suspected that it might have been predominantly natural causes. Overall, there are only four museum specimens in Cambridge, at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and are in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.