Red Birds in Hilo, HI (condo, live, to eat)

[dwedeking]

There is a red colored bird I've seen up the hill from downtown Hilo. Does anyone know what species this is? is it native? Unfortunately I haven't been able to get a picture of one but it has dramatic red coloring similiar to a parrot.

[KoaKine]

Originally Posted by dwedeking

There is a red colored bird I've seen up the hill from downtown Hilo. Does anyone know what species this is? is it native? Unfortunately I haven't been able to get a picture of one but it has dramatic red coloring similiar to a parrot.

Aloha,

Up here in Hilo by the boiling pots we have red cardinals. I have a pair in my back yard and the female comes and talks to me every morning. I was surprised to see them we had them in NY.

I hope were talking about the same bird I know of only one parrot on the big Island and their green on the Kona side.

[Tigahshark808]

Yeah red bird is a Cardinal, theres choke up here in the Acres!

[mdand3boys]

Supposedly, a priest brought them over from Indiana in the early 1900's. They have changed/adapted their mainland singing a bit. We have a male that sits on the birdfeeder and eats only the sunflower seeds, then turns and looks at the window and begins yelling at me. I then have to go out and shake the birdfeeder to get more sunflower seeds to come out for him. He has me trained.

[KoaKine]

Originally Posted by mdand3boys

Supposedly, a priest brought them over from Indiana in the early 1900's. They have changed/adapted their mainland singing a bit. We have a male that sits on the birdfeeder and eats only the sunflower seeds, then turns and looks at the window and begins yelling at me. I then have to go out and shake the birdfeeder to get more sunflower seeds to come out for him. He has me trained.

Nice to see the bird is smarter ?

lol

[mdand3boys]

Originally Posted by KoaKine

Nice to see the bird is smarter ?

lol

Kinda sad, isn't it?

[dwedeking]

Thanks for the info.

[hotzcatz]

There is a red cardinal as well as a light gray/white cardinal with a red head. The males will have much brighter colors than the females.

There have also been a lot of cage birds escaped over the years who have interbred with the local birds so we now get what look like sparrows in bright yellows, oranges and reds, too. We also have a lot of the exotic small finches running loose in the wild now, too. I think they were escaped cage birds originally. Java Rice birds are on Oahu and Hawaii islands that I know of. I've been starting to see some really small birds in flocks now, too.

I suspect, of the bird species we have, if they live on insects their populations will be declining because of the coqui frogs eating all their food. Birds which eat seeds will probably continue to thrive, though.

[KoaKine]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

There is a red cardinal as well as a light gray/white cardinal with a red head. The males will have much brighter colors than the females.

There have also been a lot of cage birds escaped over the years who have interbred with the local birds so we now get what look like sparrows in bright yellows, oranges and reds, too. We also have a lot of the exotic small finches running loose in the wild now, too. I think they were escaped cage birds originally. Java Rice birds are on Oahu and Hawaii islands that I know of. I've been starting to see some really small birds in flocks now, too.

I suspect, of the bird species we have, if they live on insects their populations will be declining because of the coqui frogs eating all their food. Birds which eat seeds will probably continue to thrive, though.

Giggle ya I like the little cardinal with the red head white and gray I call them Gilligan birds when I used to visit Kona I had 1 trained to eat from my hand inside the condo

[thisbloominglife]

Ever so slightly off topic but I just had to report my experience with cardinals today (here in Ga. - not Hi.). I was sitting on the front porch reading when out of the corner of my eye I saw the shadow of a bird flying over just in front of the porch. When the bird itself came into my field of vision I saw that it was a cardinal - a bright red male. He then landed in a tree nearby. Just after that, another bird came swooping in ON the porch. It lit on the suspention chain of the swing chair I was sitting in right above my head!! I froze and it just sat there and I saw it was a female cardinal (much more subdued red-blush grey). She sat there forever. I started talking to her and she twittered back before flying away. It felt for a moment as though I had dropped into the wonderful world of Disney. :-p