Field observations · historical records · fossil evidence
Kauaʻi bird census
Our bird catalog spans living birds and Kauaʻi’s lost avifauna. Each local record below says what kind of evidence supports its presence. A bird on a Hawaiʻi-wide checklist is not automatically a confirmed Kauaʻi bird.
Residents and regular visitors documented on Kauaʻi
The Bishop Museum’s island checklist documents 127 native or naturalized residents, breeding visitors, migrants, and winter visitors. Its island statuses date to 2017, so individual presence in 2026 needs a recent dated observation. See locally documented native birds in the Atlas →
Documented Kauaʻi vagrants
These 53 species have a recorded Kauaʻi occurrence in the published island checklist, but their visits are irregular. Browse Kauaʻi vagrants →
Historically documented birds
The 2017 checklist classified five native species as extinct and three introduced populations as locally extirpated. A fresh survey would be needed to assess any subsequent re-establishment. A regional extinct bird from another island is not counted here.
Prehistoric fossil birds
These include nine named extinct species added in this census, plus three existing species accounts associated with provisional Kauaʻi fossil comparisons. Open a species to see its fossil evidence and reconstruction plate. The plates show known bone features, with unknown plumage interpreted conservatively.
Fossil forms awaiting species identification
The Makauwahi inventory also includes an unidentified goose resembling Branta hylobadistes, a shelduck-like form (aff. Tadorna), a small-eyed duck (aff. Anas), a flightless rail (Porzana sp.), and gull remains (Larus sp.). These are evidence of birds in Kauaʻi’s past. They are not named species or claims that the comparable living species occurred here.
How this census was checked
We matched all 338 existing bird entries against the Bishop Museum’s island-by-island checklist. It records 127 residents or regular visitors, 53 vagrants, eight extinct or locally extirpated historical birds, and 147 entries without a Kauaʻi code. We separately added nine named fossil species and marked three existing accounts as tentative fossil comparisons. The 200 locally supported records include irregular vagrants and provisional fossil comparisons; they are not a count of species alive on the island today.
Sources: Bishop Museum, Kauaʻi column (2017) · Burney and colleagues, Makauwahi fossil inventory · James & Olson, Pila’s Palila · James & Olson, koa-finches · Hawaiʻi DLNR bird accounts.