Just wanted to swing away from politics for a short time. This caught my eye. I like songbirds. This guy sure is tiny.
Fresh out of the shell, it tipped the scales at 0.94 grams, about the same as a paper clip. That makes the rare baby 'akepa the smallest songbird ever reared by hand.
With a steady diet of cricket and mealworm guts, bee larvae and pieces of hard-boiled egg, the endangered hatchling is expected to continue to bulk up at the San Diego Zoo.
Its destination: a forest oasis in the middle of a lava desert on the slopes of Mauna Kea, perhaps as early as August.
An endangered Hawaiian 'akepa weighing no more than a pebble is "the smallest songbird ever hatched and reared by hand," says a San Diego Zoo official.
It weighed 0.94 gram, less than 1/30th of an ounce, the Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program reported.
"It is absolutely without question the smallest bird ever hatched in our program," Alan Lieberman, manager of the Zoological Society of San Diego program, said yesterday by telephone.
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