Maui, Hawaii Animals

If you get a chance to travel to HI during the winter season, especially during February, here are some to the animals you are most likely and lucky to see. My wife and I went to Maui to visit my family in February. Thanks to my brother’s boat and my brother in law’s rental car we were able to do a lot of touring around Maui. And thanks to that I was able to see and photograph quite a few animals. I expected to see whales, lizards, and sea turtles, and I did. If you have the chance to sail around the ocean near Maui expect to see several species of whales. The most common are the humpbacks, but there are others – false killer whales and pilot whales. Do some snorkeling or beach walking and you will see green sea turtles and hear the whales. Look at trees, branches, and building walls and you will see a couple of lizard species. It’s wonderful!

But I was really surprised by two species – chickens and mongooses.  Both are now very common throughout HI, and both have originated there the same way. Where did all of these chickens come from? According to the research I did, they originated in HI back in the 1700s. By some time in the 1800s, a lot of farms went out of business and the birds were let loose. From then on their numbers exploded. That is now the most common bird species you will see and hear in HI, and even in the whole world. Mongoose began like that when introduced to sugar farms in order to get rid of rats. Like the chickens their population exploded. Mongooses tend to stay in wild areas, but the chickens are happy with wild areas and human occupied properties.

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