I’m a little behind. But living in Hawaii… can you blame
me for getting distracted? Work-wise we’ve been doing a lot of the same thing –
banding when the weather permits (it’s been pretty drizzly lately) and doing
re-sights or data entry when it doesn’t. A couple of highlights from the field:
we’ve caught four other Akiapola’au since the one that I caught on my birthday;
a father and baby, a young female, and … I can’t remember details of the other
one. But they were all cool! It’s always exciting when we catch Aki’s – the
whole team gathers around to check them out since we catch so few and there is
a lot to learn about them.
We also got the pleasure of seeing an Oma’o incubating
her eggs! One of the nest searchers found the nest and it was in a good enough
position to see inside (many nests they find are way up in the canopy, so you
can often only see a part of the tail sticking over the edge, or a patch of red
between sticks). Oma’o nests also aren’t common finds, but they’ve been doing
really well this year, getting up to a half-dozen or so up to this point.
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| You can see dead leaves and stuff coming out of the cavity in the middle of the picture - if you look closely you can see a gray Oma'o head staring back! |
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| The camera is crooked, not the tower. |
In addition to bird work, we also managed to put up two
40-foot telemetry towers in the last couple weeks! Let me tell you, that was
quite an accomplishment for us – we had to special order thicker poles that
weren’t as likely to bend (and getting special orders to Hawaii is not exactly
easy), because our first attempt at a 40-foot tower snapped in about 5 seconds
(even after cutting out the broken bit and shortening it to a 30-foot tower, it
still snapped). I was pretty impressed that we managed to get them in the air –
we had three people pulling on guy lines attached to the pole, one person at the
base keeping the pole lined up on the rebar it was to eventually stand on, one
pushing up the center pole with a long stick to prevent the bending that
snapped our first pole, and one pulling on a rope that we attached to the top
of the tower and slingshot over a tree to get some better leverage for the
hoisting. The best part was right at the beginning – Alex was pulling the rope
over the tree and was giving it everything he had – he was throwing all of his
weight on the rope and ended up crawling on all fours over rocks and shrubs.
After a couple minutes he called out asking if the tower was up. We shouted
back that the rope he was pulling was now taut. Needless to say he wasn’t thrilled
about our chances. But we eventually did it! So yes, these towers are great for
the telemetry aspect of the project (taller towers can stand above the tree
canopy and get better signals from the transmitters that we’ve put on birds).
I mentioned last time that I met up with my mom on the
Kona side – she and my step-dad took a two week vacation on Kauai and the Big
Island, so I got to spend a weekend with them. It was a nice change of pace
from the weekend activities that I’ve been doing with my coworkers because I
didn’t have to plan a single thing. I was just along for the ride! We had a
very relaxing weekend, with beach trips in the morning, picnic lunches, and
afternoons reading by the pool. There was also cable and insanely fast internet
at their condo, which I was grateful for (hey, I LIVE in Hawaii and work
outside for 10 days at a time… fast internet and TV movies are MY vacation!).
My mom is really into the board game Pandemic, so we played a couple games of
it each night. She even wanted to share the fun and got me a copy to take to
Hakalau to play with my coworkers! It’s too bad that George is the only other person
who consistently looks forward to playing games – with everyone else it’s like
pulling teeth. (Fortunately his roommates in Hilo are all interested in board
games, so I was able to join them for a game night after we got out of the
field one week!) While my mom was here we also had a big decision about whether
to get ice cream at an ice cream shop to eat immediately or to get some at the
grocery store to enjoy at home. We went the grocery store route and bought over
$50 of ice cream and various types of chocolate and coconut/toffee covered
macadamia nuts. You know, just the essentials.
I am rather jet-lagged as I just got back from a weekend
at home, and I still need to wander over to see the volcano that is ERUPTING
next to my house, so I’ll save the other random happenings for next time.
Though, I’ll be working another 17-day week, so my next update may just be
text, or it may not be until I’m done with this week.
Oh! I forgot to mention that my project got extended, so
instead of finishing at the end of May, I’ll be here until mid-August, so
plenty of time for more tropical updates! (Unless I *did* already mention that
in a previous post but the jet-lag is getting to me…)
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| Bonus: I went to an all-you-can-eat crab buffet and ate crab for the first (and second... and third... and fourth... ) time! |
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