The Laysan honeycreeper, Laysan honeyeater, or Laysan ʻapapane (Himatione fraithii) is an extinct species of finch that was endemic to the island of Laysan in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Quick Facts Conservation status, Scientific classification ...

Laysan honeycreeper
Laysan honeycreeper photographed by Donald R. Dickey in 1923 (probably taken from his footage), a few days before the species' extinction[1]
Conservation status
Extinct (1923)  (IUCN 3.1)[2]
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Fringillidae
Subfamily:	Carduelinae
Genus:	Himatione
Species:	†H. fraithii
Binomial name
†Himatione fraithii Rothschild, 1892
Map of Hawaii showing Laysan in the lower left inset box
Synonyms
List Himatione fraithi Himatione freethii Himatione freethi Himatione sanguinea fraithii Himatione sanguinea fraithi Himatione sanguinea freethii Himatione sanguinea freethi

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The Laysan honeycreeper was first noticed on 3 April 1828 by C. Isenbeck, surgeon of the Russian ship Moller, whose report was published in an 1834 article by the German naturalist Heinrich von Kittlitz.^[3][4][5] The British zoologist and banker Walter Rothschild described and named seven new bird species from Hawaii (then called the Sandwich Islands), obtained by his collector, Henry Palmer. One species from the island of Laysan was named Himatione fraithii, and classified as a member of the finch family Drepanidae. Rothschild found it to resemble the ʻapapane (H. sanguinea) of the same genus, while differing in various details.^[6] From 1893–1900, Rothschild published a work on birds from Laysan, with further observations about the honeycreeper, correcting its name to H. freethii.^[7] The specific name was a misspelled reference to Captain George D. Freeth, the US governor of Laysan.^{[8][9][10][11]}

In a review published in 1950, the American ornithologist Dean Amadon treated the Laysan honeycreeper as a subspecies of the ʻapapane and adopted the trinomial name Himatione sanguinea freethii.^[12] Subsequent publications followed this lead.^[13] In 2015 the North American Classification Committee (NACC) of the American Ornithologists' Union decided to promote the extinct honeycreeper to the species level and to adopt the original binomial name.^[14] This change was adopted by the International Ornithological Committee in their world list of birds.^[15]

There are at least 85 skins and six mounted specimens of the Laysan honeycreeper in various museums across the world, but two specimens appear to have gone missing. There are also at least two skeletons, three nests, and one egg preserved.^[16]

The Laysan honeycreeper was a small bird, with published length measurements ranging from 13–15 cm (5–6 in).^[17][9][6] The wing measured 65–69 mm (2.55–2.7 in), the tail 61 mm (2.4 in), the culmen (upper surface of the beak) 14 mm (0.55 in), and the tarsometatarsus (lower leg bone) was 23 mm (0.9 in).^[7] It was bright scarlet vermilion with a faint tint of golden orange on the head, breast and upper abdomen, while the rest of its upper parts were orange scarlet. The lower abdomen was dusky gray that faded into brownish white, and the under-tail covert feathers were grayish. The wings, tail, bill, and legs were dark brown, while the iris was black with a brown outline. Immature birds were brown, with paler lower parts, and had green edges to their wing-covert feathers.^[17] The bill was slender and downturned.^[18]

The sexes were alike, though the bill, wings, and tail were slightly shorter in the female. While Rothschild stated in his 1892 description that the female was paler than the male, Fisher indicated in 1903 that such differences may have been age-related instead. Fisher also noted that the illustration of the Laysan honeycreeper published by Rothschild showed the bird as far too pale, giving an inaccurate idea of its color.^[19][6] Rothschild also mentioned in his 1893–1900 work that freshly molted Laysan honeycreepers were a deeper red and not as easy to distinguish from the ʻapapane, while the latter did not fade to as pale a red.^[7]

The ʻapapane differs from the Laysan honeycreeper in being blood-red overall, with black wings and tail, whiter under-tail covert feathers, and a longer bill.^[17] The American ornithologists Storrs L. Olson and Alan C. Ziegler suggested in 1995 that the difference in plumage of the Laysan honeycreeper was due to fading caused by the intense sunlight of Laysan, but pointed out it had been found to be distinct in osteological features.^[20][21]

Palmer reported the song of the Laysan honeycreeper as low and sweet, consisting of several notes. He noted it was usually silent, except during the breeding-season,and was in "full song" during January and February. While catching and skinning birds in 1891, Palmer caught a Laysan honeycreeper in his net, which proceeded to sing in his hand; he answered it with a whistle, which it returned, continuing for some minutes without seeming frightened.^[7][16] Olson noted that their "charming song is out of proportion to their size".^[1]

The Laysan honeycreeper was endemic to Laysan Island, which has a total land area of 3.6 km² (1.4 sq mi), and is the largest of the northwestern Hawaiian islands. Laysan is the eroded remnant of a once high island, built up by volcanic activity, perhaps the flattened top of a volcano that formed in the Miocene. The island is roughly triangular, and rises into up to 12 m (40 ft) high crest elevations. Its subsurface substratum is coralline rock, and its topography suggests it was once part of an atoll with a lagoon which occupies about one fifth of the island's center, and is now almost filled with sand and coral fragments. The island is ringed by sand dunes, but is otherwise well-vegetated. The island's original flora was the most varied of the northwestern Hawaiian islands, but much of it was destroyed by human activities by 1923, leaving near-desert like conditions and several extinct species, though the extent of the vegetation had almost recovered by 1973.^[16][4]

In 1903, Fisher stated that the Laysan honeycreeper was found all over Laysan Island, but was most abundant in the interior among tall grass and low bushes near the open plain that bordered the lagoon, an area where all the land-birds appeared to congregate. This was also its favored nesting area, with its broad patches of the succulent Portulaca that these birds fed from. Munro added that it also frequented grass tops and other plants on the fringes of the lagoon. Their bright, scarlet plumage made them conspicuous as they fluttered among the soft green Chenopodium bushes.^[19][22][23]

Few naturalists personally encountered the bird, and few accounts were left of its life history. It was very active, like the Laysan millerbird, always present in vegetation around buildings, and while perhaps less confiding than the millerbird, they were reported to sometimes enter buildings for moths and for roosting at night. Unlike the ʻapapane, it also foraged on the ground.^[18][16][24] Munro described its flight as "weak and low". He stated they would gather around houses and drink rain water from leaks in barrels, indicating that they "missed water" more than the other birds of the island. He speculated they had perhaps not adapted to the meager supply of water there; apart from rain and dew, the only natural moisture was a seep of brackish water.^[23]

The Laysan honeycreeper was nectarivorous and insectivorous, and insects were probably a more important part of their diet than nectar in some seasons. The bird originally fed on nectar from the native flower maiapilo (Capparis sandwichiana), but when that species disappeared, it switched to the ʻākulikuli (Sesuvium portulacastrum) and ʻihi (Portulaca lutea).^[16] It was also observed visiting nohu (Tribulus cistoides) and pōhuehue (I. pes-caprae brasiliensis).^[21][23] The Laysan honeycreeper spent the day foraging while walking like pipits after small insects or drinking from flowers with its brush-like tongue. The way it rapidly went from flower to flower and precisely inserted its bill between their petals reminded Schauinsland and Fisher of hummingbirds.^[19][22][25] The Laysan honeycreeper gathered insects from flowers, such as small, green caterpillars, and like the other insect-eating birds were fond of large, brownish moths called millers, which were abundant on the island. Fisher observed honeycreepers extracting moths from between boards, grasping them with one foot while eating the soft parts.^[19][22][23]

After a 1911 expedition, Homer R. Dill and William Alanson Bryan estimated that 300 lived on Laysan, and that it and other birds there were "doomed to extermination".^[24][26] Domestic rabbits were introduced to the island in the late 19th century, and quickly consumed nearly all vegetation on the island, including nectar sources for the Laysan honeycreeper. The bird was filmed in 1923 during the Tanager Expedition. Shortly after, Laysan was battered by a strong storm, and later attempts at finding any remaining Laysan honeycreeper failed.^[27] Other birds also inhabited the island, including the Laysan millerbird, the Laysan rail, the Laysan duck, and the Laysan finch. Of these, only the finch and the duck remain extant.^[28][24]