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Free Journal entry:(Birds)

I noticed that most of the birds at Kawainui Marsh are the mallard ducks with the greenish necks. They overpopulate the rest of the species at the marsh by far. Why are there more mallard ducks than other duck species? Also I noticed that the Auku’u Black-Crowned-Night-Heron is always isolated from the other birds, and is seems like the smaller birds in the marsh always move when they see the Heron. Why does the Night Heron scar off these other birds and why is it relatively solitaire? I also observed that there aren’t very many of these Herons. Within an hour I only spotted 3 Herons. Why is this? The birds all venture along the waters edge, but for the most part they are just walking around along the rims of the marsh. The places with the most birds around is where all of the humans come. Why would these birds go where there is human civilization? Another observation I made at Kawainui marsh is that a lot of the ducks feed on grass and insects. I noticed that the Ae’o or Hawaiian stilt is always in the shallower and murkier water rather than deep and cleaner looking water. Why do the Ae’o stay in the shallows? Another thing that I realized is that the ducks go into the parking lots sometimes, and they also stay away from the bike lane that runs straight down the middle of the marsh. I observed that the Ae’o bird has a much longer beak than the rest of the birds. The Auku’u has the sharpest beak that comes to a very pointy end. The beak of the ducks are round and not as long or sharp as the other birds, why is this so? Also, all of the little birds that are in the trees at the marsh have very little small beaks. Most of them are sharp and short but some are round and thick. Most of the birds are out in the open and just wonder around the area, while others lay under the bushes and rarely come out to wonder. Many of the smaller birds looked into the grass for insects, while many of the bigger kinds of birds go into the water and dive for some of the little fish. Why is it that the little birds don’t feed on the fishes? One other thing that I realized about the birds here is that the ducks don’t fly unless it’s very low to get away from a human approaching or other scares. For the most part only the little birds fly because their home is on top of the trees. Why is this that only they fly?

One of the House Finch's that lives in Kawainui Marsh:

Assigned Journal entry: Some of the duck species have brighter feathers than the other ducks. Since these ducks with the brighter green feature other than the plain colored gray ducks are more populated, maybe the ducks with the prettier feathers are more likeable and they help attract mates so they can reproduce while the ones with the duller gray become less populated. Although, the ones with the bright green feathers are probably more prone to being attacked by predators such as dogs because they are more easily seen. At Kawainui Marsh it also seems like there are a lot more birds than there are fish. It seems as though the fish are being eaten by the large amounts of ducks. There is competition for these duck species while they are hunting for fish. It seems as though the water birds with the bigger beaks get more of the fish. An example is the Mallard duck and the Hawaiian Coote. I saw them competing for fish about 3 times and every time the Hawaiian Coote would end up swimming away somewhere else while the Mallard duck got the fish. This could be because the Mallard duck is relatively larger in size and a little bit larger beak size too. The number of Mallard ducks are more than the number of Hawaiian Coots. This could be a sign of Natural Selection. The water-birds that are larger and have larger beaks are most likely to produce offspring and further succeed in numbers because they are more likely to get the fish while competing with other water-birds. I also noticed that there were many different colored little birds around in the trees. There were a lot more Cardinals than House finches. I believe this is because there are many insects at the marsh but House finches are found to be vegetarians and mostly feed on things such as berries or seeds. There are many more things for the Red Cardinals to eat because they can also eat many various kinds of Beatles and insects so there is more food for them and their offspring so therefore there are more of them at the Marsh.