Greater ʻAmakihi

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Greater 'Amakihi

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Drepanididae
Genus:	Hemignathus
Species:	H. sagittirostris

Binomial name

Hemignathus sagittirostris
Rothschild, 1892

Synonyms

Viridonia sagittirostris (Rothschild, 1892)

The Greater 'Amakihi (Hemignathus sagittirostris) was a species of finch in the Fringillidae family. The Greater Amakihi was the largest recent Amakihi. It was brownish winged bird with a yellow body ending with a notched tail, and a whitish pointed beak. It was six inches long and it had blackish brown legs. The major difference between it and its relative was that its bill was white and the fact that the bird was six inches in comparison to the four inch Hawaiian Amakihi. It lived in a small tract of forest where it crept through the vines and trees for insects as part of its diet. It was thought to have been seen sipping nectar from O’hia trees. It was thought to have gone extinct when the only population was killed when the land they lived on was turned into a sugar plantation. After the land around Hilo was cleared in 1901, the bird was never spotted again. The ironic thing was that all large scale plantations like the one that was made on the Greater Amakihi’s land was abandoned. It appears not to have been widespread, found rarely, even in the past when there were no environmental conflicts. It was found only in the Island of HawaiiThe species was last recorded in 1901 and is now considered extinct.