Kipukas and Akis

BirdNote^® 

Kipukas and Akis

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote.
     [Akiapola’au song]
You’re hearing the song of one of Hawaii’s rarest forest birds, the ‘Akiapola’au.  [‘Akiapola’au song] This male ‘Akiapola’au – or Aki’ for short – is singing in an isolated grove of trees on the slopes of an active volcano.
In Hawaii, such groves are known as kipukas. A kipuka is an island of native forest surrounded not by water but by recent lava flows. Kipukas are green oases in a sea of black lava. They’re critical areas of native habitat -- home to species found nowhere else on the planet.
The Aki’ possesses what one observer has called a “Swiss Army knife” bill. Its short, straight lower beak is paired with a long, slender, curved, and flexible upper beak. As it forages up and down tree trunks and across the branches, the short half hammers like a woodpecker’s bill, and the upper probes for insects under the bark and lichen.
[Akiapola’au song]
 [The species is found only on the Big Island of Hawaii.] Some of the roughly 1,000 Akis left on earth live and breed in kipukas on the lower slopes of Mauna Loa, Hawaii’s largest active volcano. [Rumbling volcano]
In living with a rumbling volcano, Aki’ and kipuka perform one of nature’s most remarkable balancing acts. [Rumbling volcano and Aki]
Today’s show brought to you by the Bobolink Foundation. For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.
###
Song of Akiapola’au provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, recorded by T.K. Pratt.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2012 Tune In to Nature.org     June 2012   Narrator: Michael Stein

ID#         kipuka-01-2012-06-30