Warbling Their Way to Happiness – Hawaiʻi Audubon Society

10 things we want to share about the Warbling White-eye (Mejiro)

In 2018, researchers changed this bird’s English name from Japanese White-eye to Warbling White-eye.
Researchers have identified 15 subspecies (so far) of Warbling White-eyes, native to Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea, and far east Russia.
Most Hawaiʻi residents know the bird by its Japanese name, mejiro. In Japanese, me means eye; shiro/jiro means white.
In 1929, the Hawaiʻi Board of Agriculture and Forestry imported the first Warbling White-eyes from Japan to Oʻahu to eat insect pests. Introductions continued through 1937.
The birds spread throughout the main Hawaiian Islands on their own and are now abundant in both wet and dry areas, from sea level to tree line.
Warbling White-eyes eat insects, fruit, and nectar.
On Oʻahu, the birds feed in over 30 tree speciesfor fruit and nectar. In native forests, white-eyes visit ʻōhiʻa and māmane trees for insects and nectar.
On the plus side, researchers have reported this songbird visiting the flowers of the endemic lobelioid, ʻōhā wai nui (Clermontia arborescens), the bird perhaps acting as a pollinator to some native plants.
On the minus side, white-eyes compete with native forest birds for nectar and spread seeds of unwanted nonnative plants, such as lantana and banana poka.
Warbling White-eyes are widespread throughout the main Hawaiian Islands, but at only four inches tall, and constantly flitting about in trees, the greenish birds can be hard to see.