169 

 The Introduction of Birds Into Hawaii. 



UY WIJ.LIA>[ ALAXSON BKYAX. 



(Author's Al)stract.) 



Geologists point out that hirds came' into existcuce in the 

 animal kingdom long after the elass Inseeta had hegua to 

 flourish. Finding a pi<ace vacant in the scheme of nature, they 

 proceeded through the process of evolution and adaptation to 

 fill it. As time went on the class was divided into orders, 

 families and species, each suited to its environment and each 

 endowed with special food hahits. That so many birds are 

 insectivorous may be taken as an index to the enormous re- 

 productive capacity of insects and their general acceptability as 

 food for birds, as w^ell as the inadequacy of the forces of the ani- 

 mal kingdom that fed on insects before the advent of birds. 



True as this generalization may be of birds as a class of 

 animals, it is not so true of the birds of Hawaii. Isolated as 

 the islands have been, api)arently from very remote geological 

 time, their land fauna has l)een singularly of an accumulative 

 character. The birds that came to the Islands doubtless came 

 by accident, and their future depended on their ability to adapt 

 themselves to the conditions as they found them. As a conse- 

 quence, they became in a large number of cases highly special- 

 ized, nectar-feeding species and, as a result, they were unable 

 to adjust themselves to the change in the flora and other condi- 

 tions which preceded or accompanied the advent of white men 

 in the group. AVhat we know of the extinct species indicates 

 that the bird fauna Avas in a vanishing condition even before 

 white men came to the group. Their coming, therefore, has 

 only added to the adverse condtions then existing. The dis- 

 appearance of the native birds from Hawaiian forests is one of 

 the wx-)nder tales of ornithology. With three or four excep- 

 tions, no birds have been introduced to take their place and 

 help in any way to re-establish the balance of nature which 

 exists elsewhere and which doubtless would have existed here 

 had the isands been more accessible to the ordinary routes of 

 bird migration. Add to the isolation, the environmental 

 changes that have taken place in these islands in the last one 

 hundred vears, and we have a condition that has but few 



Proc. Haw. Ent. Soc, II, No. 4, April. 1912. 



