One 1778 painting by William Ellis (plate 70) depicts a light bird, possibly the Leiden specimen (which was apparently collected in late January/early February, 1779), and in more recent times, subfossil bones have also been recovered.

It was a flightless bird that was apparently found in shrubland and secondary growth on abandoned fields and in times of danger had the habit of hiding in Polynesian rat burrows.

Specimens are known or assumed to be from an area which roughly corresponds to the middle elevations of today's Puna district around the present settlement of Mountain View, below the primary rainforest.

The last reliable sight record was in 1884, with a doubtful one in 1893; a dedicated search in 1887 failed to find the bird, but as it was rather cryptic, this cannot be taken as unequivocal proof that it was completely extinct by then.

As neither the small Indian mongoose nor mosquitoes (which transmit fowlpox and avian malaria, both exceptionally lethal to Hawaiian endemic birds) were present on Big Island until 1883 and the 1890s, respectively, this species' extinction was probably caused by introduced European & Polynesian rats, cats and possibly dogs.