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Manu Minute: The Yellow-Fronted Canary

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Special thanks to the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for today's field recordings.

The yellow-fronted canary is native to sub-Saharan Africa, where they populate open woodlands and  grasslands in great numbers. Not to be confused with the Saffron finch, these small birds only grow to be about four or five inches in length and have grey markings on their head and wings.

So how does a bird that's barely the size of an apple banana from the opposite side of the world make it to Hawai'i? Oh, the usual way.

Because of their cheerful song and pleasant appearance, yellow-fronted canaries was first brought to the islands as a cagebird. Then one was released, potentially on accident, from an aviary near Koko Crater on Oʻahu in the 1960s. Around the same time, they were also released, probably on purpose, on Pu'u Wa'awa'a Ranch on the west side of Hawai'i island. They've since become a permanent feature on those two islands, and have also been sighted on Molokaʻi and Maui.

Manu Minute Yellow fronted canary Spectrogram video.mp4

Audio credit:  Chandler Robbins/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML32588)

Patrick Hart is the host of HPR's Manu Minute. He runs the Listening Observatory for Hawaiian Ecosystems (LOHE) Lab at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo.
Savannah Harriman-Pote is the energy and climate change reporter. She is also the lead producer of HPR's "This Is Our Hawaiʻi" podcast. Contact her at sharrimanpote@hawaiipublicradio.org.
Ann Tanimoto-Johnson is the Lab Manager & Research Technician in the Hart Lab/Listening Observatory for Hawaiian Ecosystems (LOHE) Bioacoustics Lab. She researches the ecology, bioacoustics, and conservation of our native Hawaiian forests, birds, and bats.
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