notes on Honolulu birds.



187



picked up the egg of a mynah. It is a beautiful clean turquoise

color, without spot or blemish of any kind. The mynahs are very

partial to any kind of paper for their nests, and will tear great strips

off a newspaper and fly off with it streaming in the wind behind

them. They have terrible fights among themselves, and I have

frequently run out of my cottage to rescue an unfortunate, beset,

and nearly plucked clean by his vengeful companions. Despite

careful nursing these wounded birds shortly died, and quite fre¬

quently I have found dead ones on our lawns, actually pecked to

death by their own kind.


In this wonderful climate, where for nine months the tem¬

perature averages from 80 to 90° and in winter never goes lower

than 68°, these birds have a pretty easy life, excepting when one

of the big Kona storms comes, bringing its floods of rain and crashes

of tropical thunder and lightning. At such times the mynahs and

sparrows hide close up to the trunks on the wide leaves of the cocoa-

nut and Royal palms or deep into the branches of banyan and mango

trees. The only enemy the birds on these islands have is the mon¬

goose, which also was imported here for the purpose of killing the

small rats that injure the sugar cane. However, these mongoose

have become a great pest themselves, preferring to live near towns

and villages and eat people’s chickens, and steal the eggs of chickens,

ducks and all birds.


There are a great many duck farms on the half-submerged

swamp lands, where Chinamen raise large flocks of mostly Chinese

ducks, both for the table and for their eggs ; the latter being much

esteemed by the natives and Chinese population here.


This is our fourth winter here. We came to escape cold and

bad weather at home and to live out of doors. We brought over a

motor car to run around the island in, and to take us daily from our

cottage down on the famous Waikiki beach up to the Country Club

in the Nuuanu Valley. At the head of the Nuuanu Valley is the

famous Pass, called in Hawaiian “ Pali,” up which nearly 200 years

ago the great invading conqueror Kamehameha from Hawaii drove

these poor Oahuans, and when they reached the top thrust them

all over the precipice more than a thousand feet into the valley

below. A splendid motor road runs up there now and a fine stone



