AVIFAUNA OF LAY SAN, ETC. 



209 



45. CHLORIDOPS KONA, Wilson. 



Chloridops kuna, Wilson, P. Z. S. 1888, p. 218 ; id. & Evans, Aves Ilawaiienscs, pt. iv. plate & text (1893); 

 Perkins, Ibis, 1893, p. 101. 



Adult male. Bright olive-green above and below, paler and washed with buff on the vent, 

 more olive on the under tail-coverts. Lores dusky. Quills dusky blackish, paler 

 towards the base of the inner webs, margined with bright olive-green on the outer ^^el)s. 

 Under wing-coverts brownish buff, washed with olive-greenish. Ilectrices dusky brown, 

 edged outwardly with olive-green. " Iris dark hazel. Maxilla horn-grey ; mandible 

 grey, much lighter at base. Legs and toes dark brown, almost blackish, not pale as in 

 the figure in 'Aves Havvaiienses ' " (//. C. Palmer). Total length, as measured in the 

 flesh by the collector, 6 J to 7i inches, but hardly 6 inches in skin; wing 345 to 3 55, 

 tail 2 2 to 2*35, culmen 0*8 to 0-85, bill from gape to tip 075 to 8, height of bill at 

 base 7'3 to 7'6, width of maxilla at base 35G, width of mandible at base 0*57, tarsus 

 0-8 to 0-9. 



Quite a number of specimens differ materially from the above described specimens, which 

 undoubtedly are the adult males. They are smaller, the wing measuring only 3' 25 to 

 3'4, and are much lighter and pale yellow on the abdomen. These birds are apparently 

 younger specimens. They cannot belong to a different species, because there are 

 specimens intermediate between them and the darker-bellied form, and as the majority of 

 them are marked as females they probably are the females, and some that are marked 

 males are evidently young. One of the supposed females is figured on my Plate, together 

 with an adult male. 



This remarkable form was discovered by Mr. Scott Wilson, who, however, shot a single 

 specimen only at about 5000 feet elevation. During a stay of four weeks in the Kona 

 district the discoverer saw only three of them. 



Mr. Perkins (Ibis, 1893, p. 101) says that Chloridops kona is a singularly uninteresting 

 bird in its habits. " It is a dull, sluggish, solitary bird, and very silent — its whole existence 

 may be summed up in the words ' to eat.' Its food consists of the seeds of the fruit of the 

 aaha (bastard sandal-tree, and probably at other seasons of those of the sandal-wood tree), 

 and as these are very minute, its whole time seems to be taken up in cracking the extremely 

 hard shells of this fruit, for which its extraordinarily powerful beak and heavy head have been 

 developed. I think there must have been hundreds of the small white kernels in those that 

 I examined. The incessant cracking of the fruits when one of these birds is feeding, the 

 noise of which can be heard for a considerable distance, renders the bird much easier to get 



