A legal metamorphosis

Becoming a law student has been a strange transition, particularly when I read back to the beginning of this blog.  I sincerely believe I will enjoy practicing law, so long as I can keep my focus on the environmental statutes.  As a legal intern this summer, with only one year of school still before me, I know I need to remind myself to get out and remember why I took this path away from the woods.  The reason was to try to make sure there are woods left to walk though.  And oceans left to swim in.  And birds left to see.  I donʻt feel the world is so dire a place as to say these lovely parts will disappear entirely.  But they will be diminished, less so, measured.  I hope to stay some of the incursion, keep things so, draw them out.  Hereʻs to having wild places to wander through and wild creatures to try to more fully understand.

Conviction of path

A sudden dark seabird on angular wings
Rowing through drafts tossed up by the waves
Fighting the wind but above the foam
I nearly get swept along in his faith.

Owl Haiku

Owl in the Naio.
Only when I fall silent
does he flee his perch.

Amakihi in Volcano

I don't know why there were never any Amakihi around the cabin here in the golf course neighborhood of Volcano, Hawaii. But there weren't. When I was younger, I may simply not have recognized their little calls and songs. But once I became a bird point counter, I would have known their sounds in an instant. I specifically remember often thinking about how I never heard Amakihi around the cabin. This was odd to me, especially after coming back from being in the field at Mauna Kea or Hakalau, where HAAMs (Hawaii Amakihi) are so abundant. Amakihi are also one of the few species of Hawaii's honeycreepers that seem to be making a comeback at low elevations, where diseases like avian malaria keep the native birds away or at least from becoming very abundant. Amakihi, though, are thriving at low elevation forests here on the Big Island. So it was doubly odd that I never heard them here at home, and only so rarely around Volcano village that it was a special sound there.

So this past month when I heard a familiar little squeak, my head snapped up from the article I was reading. I knew it was a HAAMie, but I didn't see it anywhere. I figured he was just passing through. But I began hearing that little voice more often, but soon I heard a HAAM song, that distinctive series of peeps that sounds like a squeaky wheel or a squeaky sewing machine. Then I saw them in the Koai'a tree outside. A female, then an adult male, both green as the leaves, but the male with a robber's black mask across his eyes.

Perhaps they're now here because the trees on the land behind the cabin are getting a bit bigger, as succession progresses. Or maybe they're re-populating this area after being extirpated from some human-caused factor. Whatever the reason, there are at least two around, and I've heard more on my bike rides. Welcome back little Amakihi!

Team Hoawa

I gave the one-year-old chicks some Hoawa capsules today. They were all down to investigate right away and they grabbed a couple capsules to take up to their hack box tops to make some attempts to open them. For a while they were all making quite a ruckus, running around, chasing the rolling hoawa fruits like a little soccer team.

Then Po Noe grabbed a Hoawa and brought it over to the water dish, where she dunked it and began pounding on the capsule while Ikaika watched her. The tableau was happening at a low angle from my perspective from the door window (with supposedly one-way glass) so I was on my tiptoes trying to watch her progress. Ikaika somehow guessed that I was there and flew up to perch on the door handle and peer back at me. Because I was watching Po Noe so intently, my face was very close to the glass. And because Ikaika is his precious self, his face was completely smashed up against the window, his breath fogging the glass. So for a while we were eyeball to eyeball, although I was pretty much ignoring his cries for attention.

None of the crows got the capsules open, once again, but a great time was had by all and when I left them they were all still industriously working on succeeding.

What is the current status of de-listing the 'Io?

I've noticed that I've been seeing 'Io more and more these days. One day recently, when I was down in Hilo, I saw 'Io on 3 separate occasions (admittedly there is no way to know if they were the same bird):

-one crossing high above Hwy 11, heading over to the KTA shopping center.
-one skimming over the trees towards the downtown park as I was driving away from the Hwy 11/Hwy 19 intersection.
-and another that I heard and glimpsed while in the open-air section of the Hilo library. I heard a Mynah squawking and I looked up to see a dark-bellied hawk flying away.

I've also been noticing them often in Volcano soaring above the forest, usually when I'm driving on the Hwy near the park. I also see them occasionally perched on utility poles within the neighborhood here. I don't remember seeing 'Io quite so often when I was younger. I'm not sure if this increase in sightings is due to my heightened awareness of birds in general, or if this is reflecting an increase in abundance.

But even with all these sightings, I'm ashamed to say that I'm not sure what the status is on their ESL de-listing. I know there was a hubbub about it, for reasons both ecological and commercial, but I don't know what the outcome was. The hawks certainly seem to be doing okay, but the only data I have are our collective observations. In my opinion, the threats that put a species on the ESL in the first place need to be addressed before the species should be de-listed. But it's definitely a happy thing that the 'Io seems to be doing so well. I wonder if a possible gamebird population boom has had a subsequent effect on 'Io population numbers. If we could find 'Io nests, we could pick up pellets and analyze them to see what the birds are eating, then compare these findings with similar studies from a time when 'Io were fewer in numbers. Perhaps Kalij Pheasants (especially young Kalij) make up a larger percentage of their diet these days.

A Crow Speaks

A couple of the crows have strange vocalizations that sound a lot like human speech. The other day I was training a new intern on the protocol for caring for the Alala. We had noticed that there was a loose perch in aviary B that morning and so brought along the power drill to fix it in the afternoon.

Aviary B, for those of you who don't know, is the home of one of the top three craziest/scariest male crows, Kukuna. Kukuna, in Hawaiian, means "ray" or "spoke" as in a ray of sunshine, the spine of a sea urchin or the spoke of a wheel. I have no idea what the person who offered "Kukuna" as a name for an Alala was thinking, but there it is. I can't help but see a certain irony in the translation "a ray of sunshine".

Kukuna has attacked a staff member before. Granted, she is a small diminutive woman with a southern drawl, but Kukuna's potential threat is accepted by all. He often enters the hack box while I am cleaning up in there and stares balefully at me. Or, he'll lurk furtively just outside the door, swaying slightly on his perch, shifting his weight from foot to foot as if sizing me up and debating the satisfaction of attacking me versus the risk of taking out the one human who has control over his food pan that day.

So the intern and I took someone's advice and I brought in the giant net with us when we went to go fix the perch in Kukuna's aviary. The net must be considered the scythe of death to these birds because upon glimpsing it, he and his mate, who housed right next to him in a separate chamber of the aviary, went nuts. Their screams exploded in our ears the second we entered. Answering shouts came from adjacent aviaries as the other crows expressed their solidarity with the embattled pair.

I climbed up the secured ladder and re-aligned the loose perch to the bracket that attaches it to the wall. I fumbled in my pocket for a screw and washer to drill into the branch when Kukuna ceased his cawing and let out his charlie brown voice. This vocalization sounds a lot like the adults in the charlie brown cartoons, kinda like a tuba in the other room. When its coming from a small black bird, it's utterly hilarious. Even though I suspect Kukuna was breaking out the big bad voice in order to tell us to go to hell, he lost all credibility with me, and became ever so adorable. He continued to warble to us as we packed up and left the aviary. I hope our exit gave him the confidence that he had succeeded in chasing us away with his scary voice.