Birding on Hawaii islands (1 Viewer)

Hallo,

has anyone expirience in birdwatching on Hawaii islands.
Which are good places ? Where are places they are not so touristic.
But at Hawaii islands I am even more interested in plants, because more than 90 % is endemic. More percentage of endemic plants than all the other island in the wourld. For me rainforest and humid mountain forest is very interesting.
Thank You very much.


Best regards
Dieter

Hi Dieter

There is a good English-language website www.birdinghawaii.co.uk which has a lot of information on it about the wildlife of the islands, and there are a few good field guides out there (best purchased from bookshops on the islands), out of personal choice, I love Kauai - probably the best island for the tropical plants as well, with the mountain on Maui a good place for endemic birds and plants, and the Big Island a bit of a change with so many varied habitats - I'm sure you'll have a great time out there!

Dieter,

This might be a useful site for you to check out. It is by Kerrypilot a member of BF that now lives in Colorado but lived in Hawaii for quite a few years. You could always use the contact her through her site or PM her from here.

http://www.dougandkerrypilot.com/

Greetings Dieter,

A bird guide you are not likely to see on store shelves in Hawaii is “The Birds of Hawaii and the Tropical Pacific” by Pratt, Bruner and Berrett. I used this book recently and it is pretty good. It has individual checklists for each Island which I found helpful. I found a bunch or trip reports from other bird watchers who visited Hawaii in the Internet. Just search with the Island name and the term “trip report” and you should find a lot of good suggestions on where to look. If you can, try to find Douglas Pratt’s Enjoying Birds in Hawaii. It has a good description of where to find various specialties. I only had a 8 power pair of binoculars and I wish I’d had a spotting scope. I was unable to identify a few albatross from shore, and there were a couple of other birds at sea that I couldn’t see well enough. Good luck!

Joe H

Hawaii islands

Hallo,

thank You very much for advises.
For trekking books I found
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0971727910.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0899973051/104-7258439-3649527?v=glance

No idea if this books is good or not.
Also I found
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0824820975.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/1569752737.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I found also a page
www.hawaiitrails.org

It seems there is a lot of interesting things in very small areas.
If there also Mantarays there, it would be great.
Someone from US told me, Kauai looks like Moorea, but Kauai has also nice beaches ( I met them on Moorea ).



Best regards
Dieter

Dear Dieter,

I am travelling to Hawaii in May and have been doing some research of my own for good birding spots. According to the Rough Guide to Hawaii, Kauai is a good place for Hawaii's endemic birds. The Koke'e State Park is supposed to be very good, and the guide cites it as '...one of the last great sanctuaries for native Hawaiian birds, safe here from their two main predators' - these are Mongeese (eat the eggs of ground nesting birds) and Mosquitoes (avian malaria).

As such I am spending the second week of my holiday on Kauai and the first week on the Big Island (I want to visit the volcanoes)!

Hope this is of help,

Neil

Piggybacking on an old thread, I'd just like to note that most of the best areas to look at native birds and plants aren't mentioned in books or on the internet, since those resources tend to be geared towards timid tourists, and when the good areas are mentioned it usually isn't in enough detail to actually make the most of your visit. You need to ask real people for birding info. For those who aren't very adventurous on their own or don't want to spend much time hunting around for the birds, the Hawaii Forest and Trail "dry forest and wet forest" birdwatching tours are a good value and go to some of the best locations on Hawai'i.

Places I've tried on Oahu

I've been to Oahu and the big island, a great holiday and I got to meet my new in-laws. We did a lots of outdoor trips not to look at birds specifically more we stumbled across them by accident.

The three bird related things we did on Oahu were:-

1. a walk to Ka'ena Point to see a Laysan Albatross colony
2. a short swim/wade out to goat island where we saw lots of wedge-tailed shearwaters
3. A visit to Audubon reserve at Waimea

I've done a livemaps colection if you want to see where they are:

We are going back next year and I'm much more into birding so I'll try and find out more stuff.

Milou

PS we also did a shark watching trip which was brilliant - lots of galapagos sharks.