POPULAR SCIENCE - Birds in Hawaii are stealing from each other, and this bird-on-bird crime even extends to members of the same species. It’s an example of kleptoparasitism, or when an animal steals things from another. Specifically, these colorful, winged kleptoparasites are pilferring nest-material, sometimes causing the demise of the depleted nest.
Researchers documented this behavior while observing over 200 native canopy-nesting birds nests on the island of Hawaii—aka the Big Island. The birds included the apapane (Himatione sanguinea), the i‘iwi (Drepanis coccinea), and the Hawai‘i amakihi (Chlorodrepanis virens).
Though there has been anecdotal evidence of such theft, a study recently published in The American Naturalist represents the first instance of it being tracked and quantified in nature.
“People working in the field have seen this behavior for years, but it’s never been documented at this level,” Erin Wilson Rankin, lead-author of the study and an entomologist at University of California, Riverside (UCR), said in a statement. “Now we can say who’s doing it, who they’re stealing from, and what happens to the nests afterward.” Wilson Rankin’s husband, UCR biologist David Rankin, is also a co-author.