ʻAkikiki

Appearance

The ʻakikiki is small (13 cm length. 12-17 g mass), with gray plumage above and white below. Juveniles have large white eye rings. Adults may retain a pale eyebrow for several years.

Range and habitat

It is currently found only in the highest elevation native rainforests of Kokeʻe State Park and the Alakaʻi Wilderness Preserve on Kauaʻi. Subfossil records indicate that it was once found at sea level as well, and thus may have inhabited a wider range of habitats, among them dry forest. The ʻakikiki (pronounced ), also called the Kauaʻi creeper, is a critically endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper endemic to Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi.

Yet with increasing temperatures on the island, the prevalence of malaria has steadily increased even at the highest elevations on Kauaʻi.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

The ʻakikiki is often compared to the nuthatches of North America because it forages by hopping along the trunks and branches of both live and dead trees, picking off arthropods. ʻAkikiki often forage in pairs, family groups, or mixed-species flocks. Only the female incubates the eggs, but both parents feed the nestlings and fledglings.

The long juvenile dependency period means only a single brood per pair is typically raised each breeding season.

In crisis

Of the Hawaiian birds known to be extant, it is thought to be the most endangered, with only 454 wild individuals reported as of 2018. A survey report in 2021 estimated the population at 45 with a 5 percent annual decrease, in July 2023 the remaining number of wild birds was estimated to be just 5 individuals. Pakele, the last known wild ʻakikiki, was last seen on August 29, 2025. She was honored as the last wild member of her species.

Introduced rats are thought to be major predators of eggs and nestlings. The ʻakikiki has been listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2000.

ʻAkikiki is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on ʻAkikiki, Wikidata item Q1304953. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.