Birds A beautiful goose and a sad story

[RogerSmith]

Hi Everyone, just sharing the image below because its a beautiful creature, and because a few minutes after I made this image this bird (or a member of its flock, I had lost track) was run over by a car in front of me. This is an endangered Hawaiian goose or Nene. About 500,000 years ago, a flock of Canada geese blew far off course, landed in Hawaii, and diversified into 7 different goose species. 6 of those species were wiped out after the arrival of the Polynesians, bringing hunting, rats, etc. The seventh and smallest species survived. When Cook and the Europeans arrived there were estimated to be about 25,000 of these on the islands. By the mid 20th century, it was down to 50 birds. In a great success story of captive breeding, we are up to about 3800 now. They mate for life, and are largely flightless between Dec and May or so when their chicks are growing. Key risks include predation from cats and mongoose, toxoplasmosis from cat waste, and getting hit by cars. About 25 get hit per year on Kauai, I was unlucky enough to witness one of those. One of the main reasons they cross roads is to go feed on cat food people leave (in kindness) for stray cats. Seeing this bird get hit and killed broke my heart. I had 200-600mm in hand, so I got the car, its driver, license plate and even business number (it was a local contractor). I reported it to authorities as the vehicle was going too fast in a clearly marked Nene crossing. So....in memory, please learn just one tidbit about small changes that can help nature in your area. For these birds, its just slow down and don't feed stray cats. Take care of your local wildlife folks! Thanks for reading.

• ILCE-1
• FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
• 500.0 mm
• ƒ/6.3
• 1/1250 sec
• ISO 400

 

[Richard A]

That's very sad. Motorists have little regard for wildlife here. I have been abused many times for stopping my car (in the middle of the road) and rescuing (or trying to) wildlife on the road. As far as cats go (and we have may other feral animals here also) there has been a lot of research going on recently by many agencies and just about a week ago it was announced that domestic and feral cats kill about 3 billion native animals every year!

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Indeed a nice photo, but sad story.