Fun fact time! The nene was INCREDIBLY endangered for a number of years. While some people would have you believe that they're out of the woods, there are still only 2500 birds alive. I saw one in the wild back in the 90's and it was basically a big deal because of how uncommon they were. and are! Hawaii has a lot of rare birds that exist only in Hawaii-- and a lot of them are endangered. It's estimated that 25% of America's endangered species all are native to Hawaii.

Introduced animals are often the reason for our bird troubles--mongeese, for example, were introduced to combat the introduced rat problem, but instead, mongeese frequently prey on the wide variety of ground dwelling and ground-nesting birds. Rats are mostly nocturnal, while Mongooses are diurnal... which means they rarely crossed paths, leaving hawaii with two problems instead of one. There are a number of other introduced problems too, but that's venturing a bit abroad for this fun fact time...

Back to the nene though. they're a lot smaller than your typical canadian goose (as is pretty common. Animals existing on an island will often decrease in size to make more efficient use of the more limited resources available. For the nene, they also have feet that are very different as well: longer toes help them move around in Hawaii's often rugged, rocky terrain, as nene geese are pretty happy to spend their lives waddling around on the ground, rather than flying all the time. They are primarily herbivores, enjoying grass and berries. Despite being waterfowl, they swim even more rarely than they fly.