Critically Endangered
Maui Parrotbill
Pseudonestor xanthophrys
The kiwikiu or Maui parrotbill is a Hawaiian honeycreeper endemic to the island of Maui in Hawaii.
Appearance
The bird is yellow on the breast, cheeks, and belly, olive-green on the wings, crown, tail, and back, and has a bright yellow supercilium. The upper mandible of the bird's beak is hooked and dark gray, while the lower mandible is chisel-like and pale ivory. Juveniles are gray-green above and light gray ventrally.
Published measurements include mass about 24.8.
Range and habitat
The Maui parrotbill currently lives only in undisturbed wet forests dominated by ʻōhiʻa lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha) and small patches of ʻōhiʻa-koa (Acacia koa) mesic forest. Its habitat exhibits a dense understory of small trees, shrubs, epiphytes, ferns, and sedges, centered between Puʻu ʻAlaea, Kuhiwa Valley, Lake Waianapanapa, and upper Kīpahulu Valley, an area less than 2,020 hectares (5,000 acres), at elevations of 1,310–2,070 metres (4,300–6,790 ft). The kiwikiu or Maui parrotbill is a Hawaiian honeycreeper endemic to the island of Maui in Hawaii.
Fossil evidence indicates that the bird could at one time be seen in dry forests at elevations as low as 200–300 metres (660–980 ft), as well as on the island of Molokaʻi. A 2009 survey of the Waikamoi Preserve estimated that there were about 20 birds per square kilometer in the windward preserve near the summit of Haleakalā, indicating that the population was holding steady or possibly increasing.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Pairs of birds forage in a territory of 2.3 hectares (5.7 acres), that they must defend from competing parrotbills. The Maui parrotbill is monogamous and breeds between November and June.
Females build a cup-shaped nest out of Usnea lichens and pūkiawe (Styphelia tameiameiae) twigs, placing it 12 metres (39 ft) above the forest floor. Fledglings remain with their parents for five to eight months as they learn how to forage.
In crisis
This species is critically endangered, with an estimated population in 2016 of 250-540 individuals, but more recent estimates of less than 150 individuals. It is threatened by habitat loss. The preserve contains about 25 percent of the population, while most of the rest is in the Hanawi Natural Area Reserve.
Even so, more recent studies have found that the population in fact dramatically declined after 2001, as climate change has made more of the higher-elevation forests that the kiwikiu inhabits more hospitable to mosquitoes. It has been predicted that if the mosquito population continues increasing, Maui parrotbills may face functional extinction in the wild by 2027.
Maui Parrotbill 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 Maui Parrotbill, Wikidata item Q1092092. 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.
