This entry on the birds of American Samoa is offered to you, Rick's blog readers, by me, his sister Suzy. I visited Rick and Cyndi on their island paradise for a week in April. A bit of a background on me, I am a wildlife biologist by trade, becoming one mostly due to my interest and love of birds, which began at the tender age of 15. Since then, I tend to gear most of my vacations and trips to areas that have birds that I have not yet observed. Ask my husband, who has been forced to accompany me on several of them (but not this one).
When finding out my brother would be in American Samoa, coupled with the fact that American Samoa has birds that I have never seen before, I was game to go. The thought of adding new birds to my "life list" (the number of all bird species identified throughout my life), a common goal for pretty much all obsessive/compulsive birdwatchers, was enough for me. The fact that this trip would take me to a tropical island paradise during what is a lousy month where I live was just icing on the cake.
Once I made my reservations, I started researching the birds of American Samoa to better prepare me when I saw something new through my binoculars. I was surprised to first learn that there are, relatively speaking, few birds found within the land mass of American Samoa, much fewer than I had anticipated, given the island's lush, tropical habitat.
Why is that? Well, for starters, American Samoa is pretty far away from nearly everywhere, precluding a number of birds from colonizing the islands over time. Another reason is that despite its "wild" appearance, much of the island's tropical vegetation has been modified from human activity and from the introduction (whether by accident or on purpose) of non-native plants and animals. These introduced species tend to modify native habitat or provide a heretofore unknown predator or competitor for which native species have no instinctual defense mechanism. As a matter of fact, some of the most abundant birds on the island are introduced, like this Common Myna:
On the other hand, seabirds are plentiful and numerous, but unfortunately, there were a number of species that were not present during my visit. Shearwaters, petrels, storm-petrels, and several tern species missed the chance to get on my life list. Too bad for them, I say!
No matter, there were enough birdwatching challenges to keep my visit exciting. New birds were discovered nearly every day, and not always in the deep jungle or along the shoreline. I looked for birds everywhere, and found at least two or three new "life birds" along the primary road circling Pago Pago Harbor and the harbor's largest city, Fagatogo. I'm sure I was a curious sight for the average non-birdwatcher, or for any security personnel, with my binoculars glued to my eyes scanning the trees surrounding the Governor's Mansion.
But I digress from the title of this essay. Yes, the chicken or the junglefowl, what came first? I know you'll be relieved to find out that I'm NOT going to repeat any dumb chicken/road joke often provided by my brother (too many questions would be asked). But what, exactly, is a junglefowl? Well, when I received my copy of Pratt, Bruner, and Berrett's "The Birds of Hawaii and the Tropical Pacific" (the field guide of choice for American Samoa), I was quite stunned to see that a species called "Junglefowl" was portrayed as a wild species worthy of bird identification. Why? Well, see for yourself:
Does it not look like your basic chicken? I mean, come on, I know there are not a lot of birds in American Samoa, but that's a CHICKEN. Are they that hard up for birds? Could the science-based, obsessive/compulsive birder in me really, in good conscience, allow myself to add a chicken to my life list? I honestly struggled with this, because I actually saw the dang thing deep within the jungle (as did Rick and Cyndi, my witnesses). The "chickens" we saw, did in fact resemble the description of an "extremely secretive and elusive bird" generally found "distant from human habitation and other domesticated fowl."
So what to do? Add "Junglefowl" to my life list, knowing that it looks like your basic chicken, risking laughter and derision from my fellow esteemed birdwatchers? Not add it, and miss out on the addition of one more bird to help grow my list? Well, what helped me out with my eventual decision was meeting the island's top wildlife biologist, who solidly supported the literature which indicated that Junglefowl were indeed considered a wild species.
That got me interested, then, in exactly what that meant. Were chicken-looking birds wild originally, and then later domesticated, destined to become the well-known nugget of children's lunches? Or, alternatively, were these birds first developed through domestication, and then let loose to become feral chickens, and later become wild enough to be considered a wild species? Really, what came first, the chicken or the Junglefowl?
A U.S. National Park ranger, working in the National Park of American Samoa's visitor center, helped fill in this critical knowledge gap that was keeping me awake nights. Junglefowl were indeed brought over by the original peoples who colonized the Samoan islands nearly 3,000 years ago. Over time, this species became a natural part of the island's ecosystem, and it is now considered to be a wild bird. Not necessarily native, but indeed wild.
Hmmph. That doesn't mean I got used to the fact that one of the most common jungle sounds here was the "cock-a-doodle-doo" of the Junglefowl. Howling monkeys, screeching parrots, yes (well, not here in Samoa, but in your run-of-the-mill jungle anywhere else); cock-a-doodles, no.
All in all, I identified 25 species on American Samoa, 17 of which were new birds for me, or "lifers." My complete list is at the end, along with a few pictures (may I digress here and note that all photographs in this blog entry are pictures I snapped from either Pratt et al.'s field guide or "Hawaii's Birds" by the Hawaii Audubon Society).
The most abundant bird, the Common Myna, was mentioned and shown above. Alternatively, one of the most challenging of all sightings was the Purple-capped Fruit Dove, a bird finally spotted on my last day, zooming in the trees around the Governor's Mansion smack dab in the middle of downtown Fagatogo:
The beautiful White-tailed Tropicbird, with its long, trailing tail feathers twice as long as its body, always lifted my spirits when it soared overhead:
White, or Fairy, Terns fluttered joyously and effortlessly in the sky:
The Samoan Starling was a special sighting, as it is American Samoa's only endemic species (found only on American Samoa and nowhere else in the world):
You wouldn't think a pigeon would be hard to find, but the Pacific Pigeon was quite elusive in the beginning. I caught one or two glimpses of a pigeon-like bird that would rocket through the forest, and just when I was going to give up ever getting a really good view and opportunity to observe it, a Pacific Pigeon flew into my binocular sights on my last day when I was "on safari" in downtown Fagatogo near the Governor's Mansion. Thank you, Mr. Pigeon. Pacific Pigeons are probably the most culturally important bird of American Samoa. Massive stone platforms, or "star mounds," built by ancient Samoans, were used in part for trapping this bird, which was used as a food source, a hunting challenge (I can attest to its difficulty in finding), and for other purposes. In addition, it is the island's largest bird, and as such, is the only bird that can eat, and therefore spread, the larger seeds/fruits of some tropical native trees.
I give you a picture of a Pacific Pigeon:
The Cardinal Honeyeater, a brilliant red and black songbird in its adult male plumage, would stop by Rick's house nearly every day:
Collared Kingfishers, often perched on powerlines or open tree limbs, would peer sternly at you as they hunted for insects. Most kingfishers around the world eat fish, but apparently not this species, it relies on insects:
Seabirds were plentiful. Brown noddies, red-footed boobies, and greater and lesser frigatebirds filled the skies when we visited uninhabited rocky shorelines. Nesting blue-gray noddies showed up in one place, a lovely lunch spot on our hike around the island of Aunu'u. Below are images of Brown and Blue-gray Noddies:
I must also mention the flying fox, in reality, a fruit bat. This species wins the Oscar for acting more like a bird than any other mammal. With a 3-foot wingspan and looking quite like a vulture, the flying fox was the common crow of the islands. Every time you looked up, you could almost be certain to see at least one large bat slowly flapping its wings as it casually flew by. Too bad I couldn't add it to my bird list.
I missed a few birds, like the Many-colored Fruit Dove, the Long-tailed Cuckoo, and a few others. While I'm a bit chagrined at that, I guess I could take the "glass is full" attitude and believe that this simply offers me a reason to come back again sometime (well, that and the pina coladas at Tisa's!). I do hope that that "sometime" is soon.
A great document on the natural resources of American Samoa, including a summary of its birds, is a PDF file easily found on the National Park of American Samoa's website (
http://www.nps.gov/archive/npsa/book/index/htm). Wonderfully written, this engaging document offers a keen insight on the natural history of American Samoa. I highly recommend it as an entertaining and quick read.
Birds of American Samoa (* indicates a life bird for me, [i] indicates an introduced species):
White-tailed Tropicbird*
White, or Fairy, Tern*
Blue-gray Noddy*
Brown Noddy
Lesser Frigatebird*
Greater Frigatebird
Brown Booby
Red-footed Booby
Pacific Reef Heron*
Wandering Tattler
Pacific Golden Plover
Samoan Starling*
Polynesian Starling*
White-rumped Swiftlet*
Purple Swamphen*
Banded Rail*
Pacific Pigeon*
Purple-capped Fruit Dove*
Wattled Honeyeater*
Cardinal Honeyeater*
Collared Kingfisher*
Jungle Myna*[i]
Common Myna [i]
Red-vented Bulbul [i]
Red Junglefowl*[i?]
