Posted By crates on February 6, 2008

       I mentioned before that my daughter is planning to be married in Hawaii on May 21.  It looks that everything is set up with the marriage plan: ticket$ bought, the marriage arrangement$ made, and re$ervation$ made for twenty people at a luau which will take the place of a reception.  It will be held on the Big I$land in Kona.  My daughter and her new fiance were originally planning to honeymoon in Hawaii after the wedding which was going to be held here in the gloomy state of Washington.  I also had been wanting to take a vacation in Hawaii since I had never been there.  So to cut a long story short, everything will be held in Hawaii.  I have done most (all?) of the planning and arrangements which is an experience which I would not want to repeat!   Funny thing is that when I suggested to my daughter that we could hang out and do things together after the marriage, she didn’t really seem that enthusiastic about it.

Never in my life have I had the slightest inclination to visit Hawaii.  I always had the impression that it was one big tourist trap, having gathered most of my ideas concerning the islands from photographs of Honolulu and also from Hawaii 5-0!  I do not care for cities that much, nor do I care for crowded beaches.  I gradually learned that there is much more to the place than the tourist traps portrayed in travel brochures.  I think that one of the things that finally interested me in going to Hawaii was the chance of seeing some the unique endemic birds.  There is an entire group of birds all descended from the original colonizing honey creeper which has undergone an adaptive radiation to fill the vacant niches found on the islands.  Many people are familiar with Darwin’s finches which underwent a similar radiation on the Galapagos Islands, but few are familiar with a similar radiation that occurred on the Hawaiian islands producing some incredibly unique birds.  Unfortunately many of these species are on the verge of extinction.

So hopefully, I’ll be able to do a bit of birding while I am there.  I have found that it helps immeasurably to have somebody who is knowledgeable about the species, so I hope to go on a tour conducted by such a person.

Categories: birding, Birds, Evolution, nature, Personal Stuff
Tags: adaptive radiation, Darwin's Finches, endemic species, Hawaii, Honey Creepers, nature