Yellow-billed
Cardinal,
Paroaria capitata
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![]() These beautiful little birds, introduced to Hawaii from South America in the 1970s, are common on the leeward coast of the Big Island, and I photographed this one on the deck of our rented vacation house in Puako during January 2011.They are cousins of the similar (but crested) Red-crested Cardinal which is found on Kauai and Oahu but not on the Big Island. The genus Paroaria to which these South American birds belong has been reclassified from the cardinals (Cardinalidae) into the tanager family (Thraupidae) but both species kept their (now misleading) English names. |
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