The lesser ʻakialoa (''Akialoa obscura'') is an extinct species of

Hawaiian honeycreeper Hawaiian honeycreepers are a group of small birds endemic to Hawaii. They are members of the finch family Fringillidae, closely related to the rosefinches (''Carpodacus''), but many species have evolved features unlike those present in any othe ...

in the subfamily

Carduelinae The cardueline finches are a subfamily, Carduelinae, one of three subfamilies of the finch family Fringillidae, the others being the Fringillinae and the Euphoniinae. The Hawaiian honeycreepers are now included in this subfamily. Except for the ...

of the family

Fringillidae The true finches are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Fringillidae. Finches generally have stout conical bills adapted for eating seeds and nuts and often have colourful plumage. They occupy a great range of habitats where the ...

. It was

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to the

island of Hawaiʻi Hawaii is the largest island in the United States, located in the state of Hawaii, the southernmost state in the union. It is the southeasternmost of the Hawaiian Islands, a chain of volcanic islands in the North Pacific Ocean. With an area of ...

. It became extinct due to

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss or habitat reduction) occurs when a natural habitat is no longer able to support its native species. The organisms once living there have either moved elsewhere, or are dead, leading to a decrease ...

and disappeared at around the same time as its Oʻahu relative.

Description

It was a yellowish bird with a two-inch-long thin whitish-yellow bill. It had small olive green wings which it used to flit from tree to tree to look for insects like beetles and caterpillars.

Behavior

It was seen gleaning the trees in search of insects. The bill of the akialoa was also designed for more than bug extraction. The akialoa also fed on nectar in the flowers of lobeliads and o’hia blossoms. Its long bill could easily fit into petals of long flowers and took pollen from flower to flower on its forehead. It was collected at several places. It was once thought to be the same species as the Maui and Oahu form, but when specimens were compared all together the scientist saw that all three were different species.

Extinction

With the loss of the trees and the flowers it depended on, the bird had no shelter or food and disappeared in 1940.

References

External links

3D view
of specimens RMNH 110.013 and RMNH 110.014 at

Naturalis Naturalis Biodiversity Center () is a national museum of natural history and a research center on biodiversity in Leiden, Netherlands. It was named the European Museum of the Year 2021. Although its current name and organization are relatively ...

, Leiden (requires

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

browser plugin) Lesser akialoa Hawaiian honeycreepers Extinct birds of Hawaii Lesser akialoa Lesser akialoa Bird extinctions since 1500 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Fringillidae-stub