The olomao (''Myadestes lanaiensis'') is a small, dark

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endemic to

Maui Maui (; Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ) is the second largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2). It is the List of islands of the United States by area, 17th-largest in the United States. Maui is one of ...

, Lānai and

Molokai Molokai or Molokai ( or ; Molokaʻi dialect: Morotaʻi ) is the fifth most populated of the eight major islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is 38 by 10 miles (61 by 16 km) at its g ...

in the

Hawaiian Islands The Hawaiian Islands () are an archipelago of eight major volcanic islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the Pacific Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, extending some from the Hawaii (island), island of Hawaii in the south to nort ...

. It is currently listed as

Critically Endangered An IUCN Red List critically endangered (CR or sometimes CE) species is one that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. As of December 2023, of t ...

under the

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological spe ...

Description

It grows up to 7 inches in length. The male and female of the species look similar. It is dark brown above and gray below with blackish legs.

Call

Its song consists of a complex melody of flute-like notes, liquid warbles, and gurgling whistles. The call is a catlike rasp, with an alternate high pitched note similar to a police whistle.

Behavior and diet

It occurs in densely vegetated gulches, frequenting the understory where it often perches motionless in a hunched posture. Like other native Hawaiian thrushes, it quivers its wings and feeds primarily on

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants (angiosperms) that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particular have long propaga ...

and

insect Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...

Conservation

The olomao is still classified as Critically Endangered due to the possibility that an extremely small population or individuals may still exist. The last definitive sighting occurred on Oahu in the 1850s, on Lanai in 1933, and on Molokai in 1980 in the Kamakou Preserve. In the late 19th century, it was considered common to abundant on the Maui, Lanai, and Molokai, but land clearing, including the establishment and subsequent development of Lānai City, and

avian malaria Avian malaria is a parasitic disease of birds, caused by parasite species belonging to the genera ''Plasmodium'' and '' Hemoproteus'' (phylum Apicomplexa, class Haemosporidia, family Plasmoiidae). The disease is transmitted by a dipteran vector in ...

brought on by introduced

mosquito Mosquitoes, the Culicidae, are a Family (biology), family of small Diptera, flies consisting of 3,600 species. The word ''mosquito'' (formed by ''Musca (fly), mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish and Portuguese for ''little fly''. Mos ...

es decimated the birds. Introduced animals such as

feral pigs A feral pig is a domestic pig which has gone feral, meaning it lives in the wild. The term feral pig has also been applied to wild boars, which can interbreed with domestic pigs. They are found mostly in the Americas and Australia. Razorback a ...

(which create pools from their wallows for breeding mosquitoes) also aided in its demise.

Taxonomy

It is closely related to the other species of Hawaiian thrushes, the puaiohi (''M. palmeri''), ōmao (''M. obscurus''), and the probably extinct kāmao (''M. myadestinus''). Maui birds may have constituted a separate subspecies or race, but became extinct before any studies could be performed. Two

subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...

are recognized: *''M. l. lanaiensis'' - Lānai thrush *''M. l. rutha'' - Molokai thrush The extinct ʻāmaui, that was endemic to

Oʻahu Oahu (, , sometimes written Oahu) is the third-largest and most populated island of the Hawaiian Islands and of the U.S. state of Hawaii. The state capital, Honolulu, is on Oahu's southeast coast. The island of Oahu and the uninhabited Northwe ...

, has sometimes been considered as a subspecies.

References

External links

Species factsheet
- BirdLife International
3D view
of specimen RMNH 110.026 at

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, 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) Myadestes Endemic birds of Hawaii Biota of Lanai Biota of Maui Biota of Molokai Critically endangered fauna of Hawaii Birds described in 1891 Taxa named by Scott Barchard Wilson Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Turdidae-stub