Critically Endangered
Nihoa Finch
Telespiza ultima
The Nīhoa finch is one of the two endemic bird species of the tiny Hawaiian island of Nīhoa, the other being the Nīhoa millerbird.
Appearance
The birds have a yellow throat and the front is streaked with brown. The head and back are brown streaked with black.
It measures about 6 inches in length.
Range and habitat
The Nīhoa finch is one of the two endemic bird species of the tiny Hawaiian island of Nīhoa, the other being the Nīhoa millerbird. The island's population is 1000–3000 birds. An attempt to protect the species against extinction was made by starting a colony on French Frigate Shoals, another leeward island.
Nīhoa is part of a group of islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge that provides protected land for the Nīhoa finch to roam on. In August 2026, 49 Nīhoa finch were translocated to Kapou Island, also known as Lisianski Island/Papaʻāpoho, to establish an insurance population, the third single-island species translocation in the NW Hawaiian Islands after Laysan Finch and Nīhoa Millerbird.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The diet of this bird includes items like sea birds' eggs, small arthropods, and the seeds and flowers of some of the native flora. The breeding season begins in February and might go on till early July, ending with a clutch of usually three eggs.
In crisis
The Nīhoa finch was added to the Endangered Species List by the U.S. This would ensure its continued existence in case the Nīhoa population was wiped out.
Nihoa Finch 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 Nihoa Finch, Wikidata item Q913120. 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.
