Day 2 - Around the Island (Fauna)
Check out the map if you want to see the location of the towns I'm talking about.
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The morning began with a couple of zebra doves landing on our lanai. They
began to do this be-bop dance. This was accomplished by bobbing their heads
up and down, and their butts going up in the air. Pretty funny to watch,
here's a picture of them in the act.
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After a bit of dancing, one of the doves jumped down closer to me. They
were rather tame and didn't seem all that bothered that I was pretty close
to them. Oh, and for the record, zebra doves are not endemic. They were
imported from Malaysia in 1922. (See, I DID read my bird book, "The Birds of
Kauai" by Jim Denny.)
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The first scenic stop was along the road before Kilauea. This is where we got
our first look at the most prolific bird on Kauai. Hurricane 'Iniki ("sharp
and piercing wind") devestated much of Kauai back in September 1992. When
this happened, many of the domestic chickens got loose and they thrived on
their own. We seriously saw them EVERYWHERE. Most of the roosters looked
like this one, black with gold head feathers. Oh, and they crowed at all
hours of the day.
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Did I mention these guys were prolific? We saw many chicks as well. This
hen had a nest just off the freeway. Seemed like a strange place to raise
a family, but they seemed to be handling it well.
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More fauna! Another of the interesting wild species on Kauai, the felinus
notso domesticus. I assume the number of feral cats on Kauai is also related
to Hurricane 'Iniki but I never saw anything that mentioned it. We found
this cat because we heard a hen squawking to high heaven because the cat
had gotten too close to her nest.
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All photos copyright Anne Sullivan