In the spring of 2018 the ʻakikiki we later nicknamed Carrot first spread his wings and hopped out of a mossy nest high in an ʻōhiʻa tree that had been his home – as egg and chick – for the previous five weeks. This probably took place somewhere in the headwaters of the Waiʻalae watershed, in the southern portion of the Alakaʻi Plateau. It took place during the last great baby boom for ʻakikiki: we observed 40–-60 fledglings from 27 breeding pairs in his home valley alone. He would have spent the next several months bopping around with his parents and any siblings, learning the art of being an ʻakikiki.

On Feb 23, 2019, Carrot’s life took an unexpected turn when he first flew into one of our mist nets. Tyler Winter and Cali Crampton, two of my colleagues at the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project, gave him a metal band with a unique number on it, as well as three colors to aid in future identification. Orange over orange on the left leg, aluminum over green on the right. The colors looked a little like a carrot, and so his nickname was born.

Our project is trying to get better at using Hawaiian names. Perhaps Paʻiniu would have been more appropriate, the Hawaiian name for a beautiful, widespread plant of the Alakaʻi (Astelia menziesiana) with silvery green leaves and brilliant orange berries.

By his plumage we could tell he had been born the previous spring. In addition to the color bands we also attached a tiny 0.2-gram radio transmitter to him. The transmitter gave out a unique series of chirps every ten seconds on a specific frequency, and a small constellation of eight radio receivers stationed across the valley picked up where he was (and was not) for the next several weeks. This series of points helped us established that young male ʻakikiki roam across large areas, in a way that territory-holding, older males do not.

We encountered Carrot several dozen times during the 2019 season, popping up here and there, well within the defended territories of other males. He was quiet, he was alone, and I’ll always cherish the many moments I happened upon him. A few months after he was banded we noted that the transmitter he was wearing— – with a battery lasting only a month— – had fallen off as was intended.

The year 2019 was an interesting one for the ʻakikiki of Waiʻalae. The number of breeding pairs dropped, though only slightly, from 2018. Ominously, however, only half of the banded adults that had been alive in 2018 survived to 2019 (for comparison, 85% of the banded adults survived the previous winter). The ʻakikiki of Waiʻalae were beginning to disappear.

In the spring of 2020 we were excited to find Carrot paired up with an older female nicknamed Snowflake (white over aluminum on left, white over black on right). Their pairing was the first time we were able to say definitively that a younger male was paired with an older female (she was born in 2017). They successfully fledged two young from their first nest, and they may have even fledged young from a second nest, though we were never sure.

The territory they claimed has always been one of my favorite little spots on the island, with forested slopes over a gorgeous chasm at the rim of a small creek’s headwaters. The very first ʻakikiki nest I ever found, in March 2015, was in this same spot. While Carrot’s life was taken up with the responsibilities and joys of being a first-time father, the ʻakikiki population of Waiʻalae was continuing its ominous decline. We recorded only 13 breeding pairs, down from 22 the previous year.

I don’t even know where to begin when talking about 2021. The forest was almost completely deserted of ʻakikiki, their quiet voices nearly absent. Only five adult ʻakikiki remained, three males and two females, and the females were both just one -year -old. Carrot and Na Pua, his new young mate (Snowflake was last seen in the summer of 2020), fledged the only two ʻakikiki in the entire Waiʻalae valley: Abby and Erica. The other three ʻakikiki in the valley vanished by summer. One was at least six years old and had lived in the Hanging Bowl above Forbidden Falls since at least 2017, though in 2021 his mate was already gone. We last saw him on April 30, 2021. That the Hanging Bowl should no longer host ʻakikiki breaks my heart every time I think about it.

The other two birds were paired up, and they built a nest and laid two eggs. Sadly, the young female abandoned the nest before the eggs could hatch, and we only saw her for another week after that. She may have already been in the throes of malaria when she abandoned her nest. ʻAkikiki barely ever sing, a unique quirk for a “songbird” and different from the rest of the Hawaiian honeycreepers. But this male sang throughout his final month, after his mate had disappeared. I like to pretend it was in mourning for his lost mate, but it was probably his attempt to attract a new female to his territory. But there were no more females, and then he too was gone, last seen June 28, 2021.

In December 2021 we mounted our first effort to collect the remaining four birds, this one last family. We caught only Erica, with Abby, Carrot, and Na Pua ealluding us. In March 2022 we found their nest. Sadly, they abandoned it before she could lay eggs, and we last set eyes on her a few weeks later. Throughout 2022 we would see Carrot and Abby here and there, but try as might we could find no signs that either succeeded in finding a mate or was breeding. Only two ʻakikiki remained in Waiʻalae, father and son.

In late August 2022 we mounted a final attempt to bring these two birds out of the wild. The hope is that their wild know-how could be put to good use in the conservation breeding flock on Maui. At 1:35 pm on September 2, after six and a half days of unsuccessfully trying to catch them, Carrot dropped into the Sunset Bowl where we were waiting with our open nets. Calling loudly, he flew fast through the understory, making his way toward the depths of Mamaki Canyon. But he never got there. Instead, he flew directly into one of our open mist nets, and a few moments later I held him in my hand. We placed him gently into a carrying case, hiked him back to camp, made arrangements with our contacts in the lowlands, and gave him food and water. In the morning Tyler handed him off to Chris Currier, our friend and a pilot for Airborne Aviation, who flew him directly to Maui.

Carrot now begins a new chapter in life. May he find a new mate in the conservation breeding flock and father many new offspring. I believe this was the right decision, but I also struggle with the grief that he is no longer stalking small caterpillars hidden under the mossy branches of ʻōhiʻa trees high in the misty headwaters of Waiʻalae Valley. But his son Abby is still there, the last ʻakikiki of Waiʻalae.