Hawaii’s ‘akiapolaau has a very unique beak. Image: (C) Bret Nainoa Mossman

What’s small, winged, and slams its beak into trees? If you said a woodpecker , you’re not entirely wrong. But woodpeckers don’t live in Hawaii, where biologists are investigating a curious bird that takes up a similar ecological niche—with its own unique twist.

Meet the ‘akiapōlāʻau (pronounced “Ah-key-ah-pole-ah-ow” and nicknamed the Aki): a small yellow-feathered friend with a wacky beak that looks like it has been “Frankensteined together,” because its two main components are totally different. Its long, slender, and flexible upper beak is great for pulling food out of nooks and crannies. The Aki’s short and robust lower beak, on the other hand, enables the bird to drill holes into wood. These two functions have earned the bird the nickname of the “Swiss Army Knife of the Hawaiian islands.”

The Aki is “the only bird, that we currently know of, to have evolved essentially two different bill types on the same head.…