The 'Io and the Kalij chicks

I realize the title to this blog sounds like some Hawaiian version of an Aesop's fable. Maybe I'll try writing it, but for now, it was just the most convenient way to summarize the bird encounters I had yesterday.

We’re out at transect six, finding points along the steep slope of the gully, from which old Ohia and Koa reach skyward. I hear a croak from above us, and look around wildly, the sound vaguely familiar, suggesting something to me before I can put a name to it. There, above our heads, two Io fly, skimming the cliff on which we stand. I point and call excitedly, “Io! Two Io, look, one is dark the other is light!” I raise my binoculars and watch the spectacular pair, who continue to call and exclaim about their flight together. They soar downhill, surfing on the undulating forest surface, the very tips of their wings bent upward from the draft, like Red-tails. I lose sight of them as they blend into the complex pattern of the endless forest below.

I’m driving in the truck back to the field station. Annie is up front and Anh Nguyet in the back. The roads are like the surface of an unsettled ocean. At night, I continue to feel as if I’m riding the swells. Today, the dust swirls around us as I slow down for a particularly steep bump, edging the 4WD truck up slowly so as to avoid bouncing and thus scraping the undercarriage. I’m concentrating on the road so much that I don’t see what Annie does. “Look,” she says suddenly. She’s pointing up the road. I can see a small chicken-like bird paused in the shade of a Koa tree at the side of the two-track. Barely discernible is her red skin patch on her face, like a scarlet silk mask. “Kalij,” I say, slowing down. “Female, look she’s all brown, not dark black-blue like the male.” Then we see lots of little fluffballs scurrying around the female Kalij’s feet. Annie squeals in delight, “ooh, chicks!” Indeed, tiny yellow and brown striped chicks peer at us bemusedly until we edge too close in the truck. Some particular personal space boundary crossed, Mama Kalij reacts by striding off purposefully into the tall grass. The baby chicks try following her, frantically running, tripping, fluttering and bubbling around like chaotic popcorn. As we go slowly by, each of us craning our necks for a look at the chicks, they seem to me like unorganized ninjas, careening here and there as they flee the unbeatable truck monster.

Pueo

We were walking down on corridor Long, having left the corridor in the pasture and gotten into the forest points. The forest points are always the most difficult since you no longer have the obvious gulch or planted corridor to follow when in doubt. And the forest is wonderfully messy with sprawling logs, dense patches of ohelo bushes laden with red berries asking to be picked. The GPS often jumps around, unsure of itself under the tall canopy. So our paths to the two forest points meander. Annie was leading and she took a turn down into a little nook where she flushed a Pueo out from underfoot. The silent bird spread its striped wings and glided across an open patch in the forest.

"Pueo!" I whispered loudly, frantically trying to unhook my binocular strap from where it was hooked on my backpack buckle. I got the optics up to my eyes and studied the perfection in the Pueo's movement.

"What was that?" Annie asked.

"Pueo, the Hawaiian Short-eared Owl," I clarified.

"It was so silent!" she observed.

I agreed, "and think about how terribly loud those Erckel's Francolins and Turkeys are when they take wing. This guy was completely silent." I was still awed by our sighting. How were owls ever omens of bad luck? Maybe people find their noiseless mystery unnerving. But to me, owls are always a mesmerizing blessing.

I paused to write our sighting down on my point count notebook, then we continued hacking out way through the dense underbrush and wading through the waist-high seed-infested golden grass. We left a wake in the meadow and Pueo watched our labored progress from the darkness of an afternoon shadow.

Hakalau Forest

I am living at the U. of Hawaii field station at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge for ten days at a time this summer. On my weekends I head back over to Volcano where I stay at my dad's house. There are two interns with me: Anh Nguyet and Annie, both very nice and capable people, undergrads at Stanford. This is their first field experience, so they are still learning GPS and compass use, and how to hike around the forest without a trail (a real skill!).

This morning I woke up at 4:40, ate a breakfast of almond-banana oatmeal, and then we piled in the truck. I drove down to corridor "Grove" where we got out and followed our GPS to our first point, CG+16. A blue-and-white striped flag marked the exact spot that Liba had worked at last year. Anh and Annie put out the bug pan traps which are ostensibly 6 plastic bowls of 3 colors: two yellow, two blue, two white. They filled the traps half-full with slightly soapy water. The reflective surface of the water attracts insects, and I guess the different colors attract different types of arthropods. The slimy soap in the water makes it difficult for the bugs to get out again, and so they are sacrificed to science. Tomorrow we will go back to each of the points we left traps at and collect the bugs, now specimens, for identification later on. This will allow researchers to know what kind of arthropods are living at Hakalau. Liba is particularly interested in knowing how many native bees, genus Hylaeus, are around, and if they're doing okay or if they're declining.

I let the interns set out the traps, then they move on to the next point, 150m downhill. Once they've disappeared and their rustling has moved on, I begin my 8minute bird point count. For 8min I stand quietly and record every bird I see or hear, trying to keep track of those I've already counted (no easy feat, try keeping track of Japanese White-eyes bubbling around in a Koa tree!). This morning's point count of 10 points was a little slow. At several stations I only had three species: Amakihi, Japanese White-eyes and Northern Cardinals. Two other birds I counted a lot were Wild Turkeys, blabbling in the distance, and Erckel's Francolins, a chicken-sized ground bird who likes to startle hikers by suddenly bursting into the air with an explosion of wing beats from where you were about to put your foot.

The mornings are cool here, and the sun makes the distant clouds blush over Hilo town, far below us. The mountain top to our west begins to glow long before the sun hits our elevation. By 8am though, the sun is beating down and hiking gets hot. The shade remains cool and pleasant all day, however.

Yesterday I was helping to collect the samples from the pan traps down in the forest and I heard a descending ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee, like the Amakihi squeaky sewing-machine song, but with a distinct downward movement, a Hawaii Creeper! One of the three main endangered birds here at Hakalau. Then, from a little farther off I heard the jijit, double begging call of a young HACR. I smiled in their direction, but I had a bowl full of floating dead bugs in my lap, a vial with alcohol in one hand, and a pair of tweezers in the other hand, so I couldn't get up to go find them. I bent back down to my work and finished quickly. On my way back to the road, I heard a little two-note squeak, and looked up to see a chunky dull yellow bird with hardly a tail jumping around the large branches of a meandering Koa tree. I popped my bins up and saw the distinctive bill of an Akiapola'au, with a long curved upper mandible and the stout woodpecker-like lower mandible. The Aki peered at me then leaned over the branch to peek underneath for possible grubs. Another Aki joined the first and they exchanged soft dee-deet calls.

A little brown bird swooped in, as if wanting to know what was going on in this little busy spot in the forest. He spotted me and began whistling "paio! paio! eh-eh-paio!" The little Elepaio flew from one branch to another with a snap of his bill. When he landed, I saw he had an insect in his beak. He shook his head and gobbled down his snack, then hopped along the branch to get a closer look at the tall flightless intruder.

I said goodbye to the forest birds and went back to the road where Anh Nguyet and Annie were waiting.