The koloa is an able flier, active on the ground or in the water. Its food is mostly pond life. Henshaw found their stomachs filled with two species of fresh-water molluscs. The crops of some we shot in Kona close to grass land were filled with earthworms. They at times left the pond and foraged in the grass. Their voice is that of the domesticated duck, the female quacking and the male hissing. A wounded duck hiding in the pond quacked to her mate when he returned calling for her.
LAYSAN DUCK
Anas wyvilliana laysanensis Rothschild
Other name: Laysan Teal.
The Laysan duck is endemic to Laysan Island, but in a precarious position as to survival. It is evidently a descendent of the koloa but is smaller, being about 16 inches in length; about the same color, differing by having an irregular white ring around, the eye. The female is smaller than the male and has less white about the eye. Some of the males have the central feathers of the tail curled up like some of the males of the Hawaiian duck. The downy chicks are darker in color than the chicks of the latter. We found no eggs except a shelless one in the oviduct of a female. It measured 2.12x1.43 inches. Captain Freeth said eggs he had seen were generally smaller and shorter.
This duck though strong on its feet is weak on the wing and swims but little. It has difficulty in rising and generally flies only a short distance, but one I chased to test its flight "rose pretty high and flew a good long distance." It is unwary and some that were raised in the camp returned to their coop every night after being released. The wild ones ran around the buildings in the evenings and early mornings chasing moths which furnished food for all the land birds on the island at that time. They also fed on caterpillars and maggots. In the daytime several might be seen sitting along the top rail of a fence around a vegetable patch at a brackish water seep.
Hunters had shot a number when the guano works were started but Captain George Freeth, manager of the works and Governor of the island had this species under special protection when we were there. So we took but few specimens. In fact all the birds of Laysan were given a measure of protection. Freeth used to send men before the mule cars, to clear the track of the young birds that had strayed there. The guano deposits had been built up through countless ages by the droppings of the birds and dead bodies of thousands of young birds of all sizes killed in storms. The principal guano producer was the Laysan albatross but numbers of other birds contributed to the deposits. It seemed reasonable to protect this source of wealth for future generations. The duck and small birds were protected for esthetic and scientific reasons. Pity it was that protection was not carried on effectively in years following the closing of the guano works. Declaring it a bird sanctuary as Theodore Roosevelt did in 1909 was not enough. Periodical inspection and care are necessary also.
Laysan duck (Anas wyvilliana laysanensis), Laysan Island.
Photo by Dr. Alfred M. Bailey, 1913.
The Japanese plume hunters in 1909 probably killed the duck for food, but when Professor Dill was there in 1911, before rabbits devastated the island, there were six of them living. After rabbits had made a desert of the island Dr. Wetmore saw 20 individuals in 1925. Coultas of the Zaca expedition in 1936 saw 11 but his stay was short and he probably did not see all that were there.
A bird that can come through such trials and vicissitudes as this bird has and rehabilitate itself deserves respect and every chance to perpetuate its species. No further collecting of specimens of any bird should be permitted on Laysan till it is known that the rare birds have fully recovered.
PINTAIL DUCK
| Anas acuta tzitzihoa Vieillot | Plate 5, Figs. 3 & 4 |
Other name: Sprig. Hawaiian names: Mapu; Koloa mapu. (Mapu signifies to rise and float off, as a cloud, which well describes the immense flocks of the past.)
"Adult male: Head and upper neck hair brown glossed with green and purple; sides of head with white stripe; dorsal line of neck black; lower neck and underparts white; back and sides vermiculated with black; speculum greenish purple; tertials and scalpulars silvery and black; tail cuneate with much projecting middle feathers. Length about 28 inches. Female: Above grayish dusky with bars and streaks of yellowish brown; lower parts chiefly white; flanks and under tail-coverts streaked with dusky. Smaller." (Henshaw.)
The pintail duck is a regular winter migrant to these islands and spends.so much of the year here that it is justifiable to class it with the indigenous birds.
The regular migrants of which there are five waders and two swimmers arrive in the Hawaiian group in the autumn and leave in the spring. There does not seem to be accurate data on their arrival and departure except for the Pacific Golden Plover which arrives in August and September and leaves in May. That gives at least 7 to 8 months of their year here, and probably more as they often appear in July (at least on Midway and Niihau). The other migratory birds may not spend so much of their time in the group but even so, it is undoubtedly more than half of the year. They do not breed here, except rarely the curlew, so are technically not indigenous.
In the past this bird came in large numbers to the islands. In March 1891 there were large flocks in the lagoons at Mana, Kauai and in the fish ponds near Kailua, Hawaii in December of the same year, but they were quite shy in both places. We had difficulty in getting a limited number of specimens. They visited the coast of Molokai during the time 1 was there, 1899 to 1906, and I took specimens at Palaau on that island. I saw a few at Kawela, Molokai in January 1943 and several hundred on the Kanaha pond near Kahului, Maui, where they had become very tame through having been protected for several years by the plantation people. In 1939 one was found exhausted in the surf at Jarvis Island about 1,300 miles south of these islands. Early in 1943 a flock arrived at Palmyra about 1,000 miles from the main islands. About 22 were kept in a pea for awhile but as they did not thrive were released. Some of them continued to return to the pen and spend the night there for a considerable time thereafter.
SHOVELLER DUCK
| Spatula clypeata (Linnaeus) | Plate 5, Figs. 12 & 13 |
Other names: Spoonbill; Spoonie. Hawaiian names: Moha; Koloa moha. (Moha signifies shiny, referring to the shiny green head.)