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Manu Minute: Little Lady Godiva

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In ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, manu-o-Kū translates to “Bird of Kū.” These snow-white birds were one of the forms of Kū, the god of war.
Ann Tanimoto-Johnson
/
HPR
In ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, manu-o-Kū translates to “Bird of Kū.” These snow-white birds were one of the forms of Kū, the god of war.

Want to get into bird watching, but don’t know where to start? How about the International Market Place in Waikīkī? It’s home to a historic banyan tree that hosts up to 20 pairs of nesting white terns, or manu-o-Kū, at a time.

Unlike the snowy-white adult manu-o-Kū, tern chicks are grey and brown, which helps them blend in with surrounding branches. These birds don’t bother with building nests, they simply lay a single egg directly into the fork or grove in a tree branch, and the chick hatches after about a month of incubation.
Ann Tanimoto-Johnson
/
HPR
Unlike the snowy-white adult manu-o-Kū, tern chicks are grey and brown, which helps them blend in with surrounding branches. These birds don’t bother with building nests, they simply lay a single egg directly into the fork or grove in a tree branch, and the chick hatches after about a month of incubation.

One tern chick in particular has captured the hearts of many this summer. It perches no more than a few feet above shoppers' heads on one of the banyan branches that extends over the walkway. It's a rare opportunity to see a manu-o-Kū chick up close — but watch out for Mom and Dad. Manu-o-Kū are very protective and will dive at visitors that they perceive as threats.

Susan Scott is a board member of the Hawaii Audubon Society. She nicknamed the tern chick Lady Godiva after the old chocolatier location in the International Market Place.

Scott remembers seeing Lady Godiva’s parents court one another in this same banyan tree only a few months ago.

"When I was standing here, there was one adult, and then another one came, and it was feeding the other adult a fish, and that’s sort of a courting behavior. And they were talking to each other. And then the next time I came there was an egg," said Scott.

Lady Godiva will likely fledge soon, so go visit her while you can! And if you want to learn more, Scott wrote a whole book about the white terns in Honolulu.

Audio credit: Chandler Robbins/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (ML32586)

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. Today's Manu Minute was made with recordings from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

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.
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.
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.
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