Maui Parrotbill Hatches
Posted at 10:16 am September 4, 2008 by Marisa Boyd
Breeding season at the Maui Bird Conservation Center is always a busy time for everyone, birds and people alike. Most days you can expect a whirlwind of activity, from setting incubators and rotating eggs to preparing diets and feeding hungry chicks. This season our efforts were rewarded with the hatching of a rare bird, a Maui parrotbill.
The Maui parrotbill is an endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper that is related to North American finches. It inhabits highland forests on the eastern slopes of Haleakala on the Island of Maui. Its bill is specially designed to pick apart native plants in search of its favorite food, insect larvae. Maui parrotbills are monogamous birds, with both sexes cooperating in nest building and chick rearing. As with most native Hawaiian birds, the main threats to the Maui parrotbills are loss of habitat, predation, and disease. The wild population is estimated to be about 500 individuals. Not much is known about their natural behaviors in the wild, which makes captive propagation a big challenge.
In the wild, the chick can be cared for by the parents for as long as nine months. This is a very long time, especially for such a small bird. The reason for this is not well known, but it may be the time required for the chick to learn all the necessary life skills from its parents.
At the Maui Bird Conservation Center, we make every effort to keep our Maui parrotbill chick as "wild" as possible. To prevent the chick from imprinting on people, we made hand puppets to stand in for real parrotbill parents. Every time we went in to feed or move the chick, we used our hand puppets. We also played audio recordings of Maui parrotbill songs in hopes that the chick will learn to sing like a wild parrotbill. Once old enough, the chick was moved to an aviary next to a pair of adult Maui parrotbills. By exposing the chick to others of its kind, we hope that it will learn some natural Maui parrotbill behaviors. The more natural behaviors we can promote, the higher the chances are that these birds and their offspring will survive in the wild.
A Maui parrotbill at 20 days old
We know little about their natural behaviors in the wild and even less about them in managed care. We try to emulate, as much as we can, the natural habitat of the Maui Parrotbill. They do not breed very often in managed care facilities, so much of what we do continues to be a learning process. In a way, we are deciphering a puzzle, one piece at a time. In time, the more we learn about the Maui parrotbill, the better guided we can be in making the right decisions to best aid in the recovery of the species. We hope, with continued patience and dedication, we will be able to restore the Maui parrotbill to its native habitat.
Marisa Boyd is a research associate at the San Diego Zoo's Maui Bird Conservation Center.
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September 4th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Marissa, what a wonderful reward for all your efforts. This make all your studies and conservation efforts so fullfilling. The birds are so beautiful, please keep up the great work and to you and all of your colleagues congratulations.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Were the parents unable to raise the chick themselves?
September 5th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
There are several reasons we remove the eggs from the parents in order to artificially incubate and rear the chicks. The most important reason is to maximize production through the process of " double-clutching.†Nearly all species of birds re-lay after eggs have been removed. This natural ability to replace lost eggs is especially valuable in the wild. Nests often fail due to predation, weather, and infertility. Most bird species are capable of laying several clutches of eggs in a season. By taking advantage of this ability to lay several clutches, we are able to increase our production of chicks. By rearing several clutches of eggs from each breeding pair, we can reach our goal for recovery of the Hawaiian endangered species much more quickly.
The second reason for removing eggs is because we are actually more successful " parents†than the actual parents. In captivity, females (the female does most, if not all, of the incubation) don't always incubate very well, and the parents don't always feed their chicks very well. Our success rate at artificial rearing is much better than parent-rearing.
The concern over the chicks knowing how to be birds without being reared by a natural parent is a legitimate issue. We want the chicks to behave like the species they are so they will survive if released and breed with their own species (and be good parents!). One way we avoid imprinting on the human caretakers is by always rearing a chick with another chick of its own species. This allows them to imprint on each other. If we only have one chick of a species, we may raise two chicks of different species together. If we only have one chick, then we rear that one chick with a mirror so it can at least see " another†chick in the mirror. Through all of the rearing process we also play the correct bird songs on a tape so they can hear the music of their parents. In the case of the parrotbill, we actually feed the chicks with a parrotbill puppet so they can see their parents (even though our hand is in the puppet). All of these precautions seem to work well–the puaiohi that we have released over the past 9 years in the Alakai Swamp on Kauai have bred very well in the wild–with other captive-reared birds and with the wild birds as well. This tells us that we have raised puaiohi that know they are puaiohi and they know how to breed and survive in the wild.
By using artificial incubation and rearing techniques, we can maximize production as well as maximizing the behavioral repertoire required to be survivors and breeders in the wild. The best of all worlds.
Thank you all again for your thoughtful comments.
Alan Lieberman is the manager for the Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program.
September 5th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Alan, Thank-you for your very informative answer!
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Amazing work! Captive breeding can save rare birds, like you've done in Kauai as well.
We still have to keep the habitat healthy. This year my sister and I hiked up to Palila habitat. We saw Mouflon sheep there. Introduced by Land and Natural Resources, these sheep eat the mamane trees, the source of food for Palila, Audubon sued Land and Natural Resources, and the sheep were to be removed. They are beautiful animals, but they should not be there. Some sort of ivy is covering the mamane trees. Who can help with these problems? Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources is the problem, not the solution.