The streets of Downtown Honolulu might not be the first place you'd think to bird watch, but at least one very special bird calls this city home: the indigenous manu-o-Kū, also known as the white tern.
These medium-sized seabirds are entirely white, with the exception of their large, dark eyes, encircled by black rings. Their otherworldly appearance has earned them the nicknames fairy tern and angel tern. Their song is far from heavenly, however — listen for their throaty grrich-grrich-grrich.
Manu Minute, Manu-o-ku Spectrogram video.mp4
Audio credit: Chandler Robbins/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML32586)
