Well, it's been awhile since I last wrote - but things have been pretty busy! After coming out of the field from our last trip, the whole crew got dressed up and went out for "Diva Night" to the Tiki Lounge in Kihei. Even the boys got dressed up, as "male divas", of course! Brad was sportin' a fly polyester button-down shirt and brown leather pants - my inspiration was a disco ball, so I wore a dress covered with square silver sequins! Pictures will be coming soon...
We also got the chance to volunteer on a seabird banding project - near sunset, the Wedge-tailed Shearwaters fly in from the sea, where they spend their days foraging for fish. As the sun goes down, they arrive on the shore and head to their burrows (yes, this seabird has a wingspan of a couple feet and they dig underground burrows to build their nests in...cool, huh?). Because they're pretty clumsy on land, you can pretty much just walk up to them and grab them. If that doesn't work and they get away from you, the burrows aren't too hard to find. Some were fairly shallow - I reached into one just above my elbow and pulled out a bird! Others were deep, and our longest-limbed crew member (John) could not reach the birds at the bottom. Now, before anyone gets any crazy ideas about trying to catch nesting seabirds, let me warn you - they HURT!! The tips of their bills are razor sharp, and they are pretty feisty. You can prevent the biting somewhat by holding them correctly and using leather gloves (geez, I've never even worn gloves to handle hawks and owls!). I tried the gloves, and found that I couldn't hold the birds quite as well with them on - so I didn't wear any (as it turns out, the rest of our crew didn't wear gloves either). As a result, those birds shredded my hands! I think everyone walked away in the same condition - but man, what cool birds! It was totally worth it, and I would definitely do it again. :-)
Brad and I also did some surveys (hands-off this time) on the island of Lana'i, which is part of Maui County. We spent three days there - not much forested land, but we had a great time! Much slower paced and smaller than Maui, more of what I consider to be real "island life". But it's probably a little boring if you live there all the time! We spent the evenings listening and counting another species of seabird, the endangered Hawaiian Petrel. They make this crazy noise, "ooooo-ah-ooooo", so you can count the calls pretty easily. We also got to look through night vision goggles to see the birds flying around us, as well as through a thermal imaging camera. Lots of fun electronic toys!
Let's see...other fun stuff...we went snorkeling to a little spot called the Aquarium, which was amazing! So many incredibly colorful fish! I took some pictures with a disposable waterproof camera, and they're being developed right now, so I'll post a few next time. We also went on a waterfall hike yesterday. We had to hike through a bamboo forest and cross the stream a few times just to reach the first waterfall (about 10 feet tall, not very big). But, if you continue upstream, as we did, you come to a second, larger set of falls. Then, if you climb a 12 foot rock wall and boulder hop upstream, there is a third waterfall. And finally, when you reach the end of the trail, if you swim about 100 feet upstream through a large pool, you come around the bend to see the fourth (and biggest!) waterfall. Quite the Hawaiian adventure! There wasn't much water pumping over the falls, due to the recent lack of rainfall, but it was still gorgeous and the pools were awesome to swim in! Again, pictures coming soon...
Speaking of pictures, I've posted some new ones from our hike to the Olivine Pools, which I wrote about in the last post, and also some surfing photos. Don't forget to look at the bottom of the page, there are a few bigger ones down there. Hope y'all enjoy 'em!
We head back out to Hanawi on Thursday - hard to believe we only have two trips left, then we're off to Lake Tahoe! Tomorrow we plan to spend the day surfing and soaking up the sun at the beach...ahhhh. Then it'll be parrotbill time once again! Take care, till next time. :-)
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Shreddin', Brah
...as in, "we went to west Maui yesterday and were shreddin' some gnarly waves dude!"
Gotta love the surfer talk! Yep, we have officially started surfing. But first let me back up to our last trip into the field...
So we've been following this one pair of parrotbill in particular, and after about 6 days of watching them and feeling close to finding their nest, the weather turned bad. Ugh. The wind started to pick up first, then the mist blew in and the temperature dropped. It was difficult to sleep at night because the wind makes the vinyl walls of our weatherport tent flap rather violently, creating some pretty loud noise. After a couple days of yucky but not awful weather, we awoke to heavy rain and SLEET! Yep, it can sleet in Hawai'i (at 7000' at least)! That night, we had front row seats for one helluva thunderstorm - because we were essentially IN the cloud, the thunder and lightning were at our level. It was so crazy! The thunder even sounded different, more resonant. Luckily, it was all around us but not too close to be scary. The next morning, the wind began to die down and we started seeing the sky again, and it got better each day afterward. So we "weathered the weather", so to speak, but the poor parrotbill weren't so lucky. The other study site had 4 nests going into the storm, but none of them made it. Sigh, poor little guys. But hopefully they will start rebuilding new nests, and maybe we'll actually be able to find them this time around! (at our site at least :-)
We celebrated St. Patrick's Day at Frisbee Meadow with a few green beers (a true delicacy in the field, green or otherwise!), a green cake, and an irish dinner of corned beef hash a la Ruby. Also, I finally mastered the art of baking cookies in our crazy little oven - you should see this thing, then you'd understand what an accomplishment this is! At the end, we were lucky and didn't have to hike out of the field - we got to fly out in the helicopter! The usual 6-7 hour trip was sliced down to a mere 5 minutes, it was truly a thing of beauty.
Out of the field, we've been spending a lot of time at the beach and in the ocean. On Saturday, our co-workers Hanna & Ruby were yard sale shopping and came across a beat-up surfboard for $10. It looks like it can barely float, but Brad optimistically bought it and made some repairs. After an Easter brunch, six of us from the crew headed over to the beaches on west Maui to go surfing. We had five boards between us, and three of us who had never been on a board before! So we rotated around throughout the afternoon, trying to get a feel for catching a wave. I should mention here that Brad's board, named The Dude, not only floats, but it can ride a wave too! Brad was able to stand on the first day and ride a wave almost in to the beach - it was awesome!! I got up to my knees, but never really stood, but oh my gosh it is just so much fun! I love being on the water anyway, but in this case, you not only get to try to surf, but in between waves, we had sea turtles swimming right by us and we could see whales breaching further out, the sun setting behind the island of Lanai - it's pretty incredible. That first time out, I could barely even balance well enough to sit on the board in the water. We've gone a few more times since then, and I'm proud to say that yesterday I officially stood up several times and could even steer myself a little! I'm using this huge 10 1/2 foot board that can be hard to maneuver when you're paddling, but it's nice and stable once you're standing! We call it "The Tony"...I guess somebody on the bird crew a while back donated it to the project, and his name was, well, Tony. So anyway, I can't wait till the next time we're out of the field and can go surfing again!
Yesterday, we also went to one of the most beautiful spots I've ever seen. You may wonder why there is not a single photo of this gorgeous place on the page, but we'll get to that in a minute. It's called the Olivine Pools over on the west coast of Maui - when lava was flowing into the sea, in this spot it dried into somewhat of a flat platform that juts out into the ocean. There are actually quite a few of these along the coast, interspersed between the sea cliffs and rocky shoreline - there are no sand beaches on this part of the island, so it's very rugged. This one particular place, however, has 4 large pools of varying colors of turquoise, green, and blue. All are deep enough to swim in, one being about 7 feet deep. Brightly colored fish were swimming around between pools, the waves were crashing on the rocks around us, Brown Noddies and tropicbirds were flying overhead...ahhhh. I shit you not, it was completely phenomenal. We were taking our last few photos, when suddenly we hear this boom and crash of a wave behind us, so I hunched over to try and keep the camera dry as a small splash of water came down around me. I was thinking, oh, this really isn't as bad as I thought - but the water kept coming, and got stronger too! It was just like getting stuck under the waterfall on Thunder River!! Which would be a lot of fun, except that I was holding our rather expensive digital camera...there were a few people there who saw it, and at first they were all laughing and cheering that we got soaked. Their loud "aaahhhhh!" turned into a softer "ooo" when they saw us scrambling to get the camera turned off and battery out. So, it seemed fine when we got it turned off - mostly I think it just got a little splash on the outside, but I'm still nervous to turn it back on! Hence the lack of Olivine Pools on my page. Perhaps next time we come out of the field I'll get up the nerve.
So, we head back to Frisbee tomorrow - we're hiking in, should be hiking out on the 6th. I can't believe it's almost April! Anyway, hope everyone is doing good and enjoying spring wherever you are!
Gotta love the surfer talk! Yep, we have officially started surfing. But first let me back up to our last trip into the field...
So we've been following this one pair of parrotbill in particular, and after about 6 days of watching them and feeling close to finding their nest, the weather turned bad. Ugh. The wind started to pick up first, then the mist blew in and the temperature dropped. It was difficult to sleep at night because the wind makes the vinyl walls of our weatherport tent flap rather violently, creating some pretty loud noise. After a couple days of yucky but not awful weather, we awoke to heavy rain and SLEET! Yep, it can sleet in Hawai'i (at 7000' at least)! That night, we had front row seats for one helluva thunderstorm - because we were essentially IN the cloud, the thunder and lightning were at our level. It was so crazy! The thunder even sounded different, more resonant. Luckily, it was all around us but not too close to be scary. The next morning, the wind began to die down and we started seeing the sky again, and it got better each day afterward. So we "weathered the weather", so to speak, but the poor parrotbill weren't so lucky. The other study site had 4 nests going into the storm, but none of them made it. Sigh, poor little guys. But hopefully they will start rebuilding new nests, and maybe we'll actually be able to find them this time around! (at our site at least :-)
We celebrated St. Patrick's Day at Frisbee Meadow with a few green beers (a true delicacy in the field, green or otherwise!), a green cake, and an irish dinner of corned beef hash a la Ruby. Also, I finally mastered the art of baking cookies in our crazy little oven - you should see this thing, then you'd understand what an accomplishment this is! At the end, we were lucky and didn't have to hike out of the field - we got to fly out in the helicopter! The usual 6-7 hour trip was sliced down to a mere 5 minutes, it was truly a thing of beauty.
Out of the field, we've been spending a lot of time at the beach and in the ocean. On Saturday, our co-workers Hanna & Ruby were yard sale shopping and came across a beat-up surfboard for $10. It looks like it can barely float, but Brad optimistically bought it and made some repairs. After an Easter brunch, six of us from the crew headed over to the beaches on west Maui to go surfing. We had five boards between us, and three of us who had never been on a board before! So we rotated around throughout the afternoon, trying to get a feel for catching a wave. I should mention here that Brad's board, named The Dude, not only floats, but it can ride a wave too! Brad was able to stand on the first day and ride a wave almost in to the beach - it was awesome!! I got up to my knees, but never really stood, but oh my gosh it is just so much fun! I love being on the water anyway, but in this case, you not only get to try to surf, but in between waves, we had sea turtles swimming right by us and we could see whales breaching further out, the sun setting behind the island of Lanai - it's pretty incredible. That first time out, I could barely even balance well enough to sit on the board in the water. We've gone a few more times since then, and I'm proud to say that yesterday I officially stood up several times and could even steer myself a little! I'm using this huge 10 1/2 foot board that can be hard to maneuver when you're paddling, but it's nice and stable once you're standing! We call it "The Tony"...I guess somebody on the bird crew a while back donated it to the project, and his name was, well, Tony. So anyway, I can't wait till the next time we're out of the field and can go surfing again!
Yesterday, we also went to one of the most beautiful spots I've ever seen. You may wonder why there is not a single photo of this gorgeous place on the page, but we'll get to that in a minute. It's called the Olivine Pools over on the west coast of Maui - when lava was flowing into the sea, in this spot it dried into somewhat of a flat platform that juts out into the ocean. There are actually quite a few of these along the coast, interspersed between the sea cliffs and rocky shoreline - there are no sand beaches on this part of the island, so it's very rugged. This one particular place, however, has 4 large pools of varying colors of turquoise, green, and blue. All are deep enough to swim in, one being about 7 feet deep. Brightly colored fish were swimming around between pools, the waves were crashing on the rocks around us, Brown Noddies and tropicbirds were flying overhead...ahhhh. I shit you not, it was completely phenomenal. We were taking our last few photos, when suddenly we hear this boom and crash of a wave behind us, so I hunched over to try and keep the camera dry as a small splash of water came down around me. I was thinking, oh, this really isn't as bad as I thought - but the water kept coming, and got stronger too! It was just like getting stuck under the waterfall on Thunder River!! Which would be a lot of fun, except that I was holding our rather expensive digital camera...there were a few people there who saw it, and at first they were all laughing and cheering that we got soaked. Their loud "aaahhhhh!" turned into a softer "ooo" when they saw us scrambling to get the camera turned off and battery out. So, it seemed fine when we got it turned off - mostly I think it just got a little splash on the outside, but I'm still nervous to turn it back on! Hence the lack of Olivine Pools on my page. Perhaps next time we come out of the field I'll get up the nerve.
So, we head back to Frisbee tomorrow - we're hiking in, should be hiking out on the 6th. I can't believe it's almost April! Anyway, hope everyone is doing good and enjoying spring wherever you are!
Friday, March 7, 2008
New Jobs?...No New Nests
Our trip into the field lasted 12 days this time around, instead of the usual 10. Which was completely fine with us, we were all looking forward to getting out there and finding a new nest or two (the other field camp already has one!). We hiked in to our field site, Frisbee Meadows, in about 7 hours. We had beautiful weather not just for the hike in, but also for most of our entire trip out there - sunny mornings, some mist and clouds in the afternoons, then clear evenings. We spent our days watching 2 pairs of parrotbill that are on the site...the males are singing quite a bit by now, so they've been pretty easy to find, but the females are much sneakier! For parrotbills, the female builds the nest and sits on the eggs, so she goes back and forth to the nest throughout the day. If you can find her and then stay with her (which is the hard part!), she will eventually lead you to the nest. But like I said, the ladies are quieter and stealthier than the boys and very difficult to follow. I didn't have any problem finding lots of nests that belonged to other birds in the forest! But the parrotbill eluded us...sigh. I do have to say, though - the more I get to see the parrotbill, the more I like them! They are just such cool little birds!! I don't have any pictures of them, but if you want to share in their cuteness, you can visit our website at http://www.mauiforestbird.org/ - the Maui Parrotbill is the star of our organization! Which is actually kind of sad, because it means they're in trouble...but everybody is doing what they can here, so hopefully we'll get a happy ending. But as I was saying, we had gorgeous weather in the field - only got wet twice that i can remember, and even then we all dried out pretty quickly. The new roof we put on the kitchen hut is doing beautifully - I'm so proud! And while the kitchen is much nicer to hang out in these days (now that it's dry!), we spent most of our free time sitting outside soaking up afternoon sun, watching the sun set, or admiring the Milky Way. The stars are absolutely incredible out there - it's one of my favorite parts of being in the field!
Let's see, otherwise, nothing too shocking or exciting happened while we were out there - but I would like to assure those who might be worried about the "safety issues" out in the field: there are no snakes in Maui! In fact, there's really nothing out in the forest that could hurt me. Now the ocean is a different story...luckily I haven't had any run-ins with sharks yet! Not likely.
So for now, on our days off, we'll be at the beach, snorkeling and whale-watching, eating lots of salad and ice cream (not at the same time!), drinking beer, taking showers...all things that we can't do out in the field! But I should add, that most importantly, it's my opportunity to CALL HOME! (right Dad?!?)
Looks like we might be returning to Lake Tahoe for another season this summer, not definite yet but likely. I'd love to have visitors! It's a really fun place to visit - just ask my Mom! Anyway, I'll keep you updated.
So that's the scoop from here! Hope you enjoy the new pictures on the website...more to come soon! Much love to everyone. :-)
Let's see, otherwise, nothing too shocking or exciting happened while we were out there - but I would like to assure those who might be worried about the "safety issues" out in the field: there are no snakes in Maui! In fact, there's really nothing out in the forest that could hurt me. Now the ocean is a different story...luckily I haven't had any run-ins with sharks yet! Not likely.
So for now, on our days off, we'll be at the beach, snorkeling and whale-watching, eating lots of salad and ice cream (not at the same time!), drinking beer, taking showers...all things that we can't do out in the field! But I should add, that most importantly, it's my opportunity to CALL HOME! (right Dad?!?)
Looks like we might be returning to Lake Tahoe for another season this summer, not definite yet but likely. I'd love to have visitors! It's a really fun place to visit - just ask my Mom! Anyway, I'll keep you updated.
So that's the scoop from here! Hope you enjoy the new pictures on the website...more to come soon! Much love to everyone. :-)
Thursday, February 21, 2008
21 February 2008
Aloha from Maui!
This is my very first time "blogging", pretty exciting huh? We can't use MySpace at work, so it seemed like this was the next-best way to try to keep in touch with everyone. So much has happened since arriving in Hawai'i at the beginning of January...a few highlights include the Bulldawgs beating the tar out of UH in the Sugar Bowl (we had to leave the bar early to avoid angry Hawai'i fans!)...our first helicopter ride out to our field sites...snorkeling, sunbathing, bodysurfing...seeing native forest birds in Hanawi NAR...watching humpack whales breaching off the coast...it's been pretty cool so far!
Brad and I are on a crew of 9 folks, and 6 of us live in a small 2 Bed/1 Bath "cottage" about 1/2 mile from the office. Everybody is very fun, mellow, and respectful of space and alone time, which definitely helps with the cramped living quarters! It's really not that bad, and because we're on a rotating field schedule at this point, we will rarely all be there at the same time. We've got a few fellow southerners on the crew as well - besides Brad and myself, one guy hails from Alabama (went to Auburn...boo!) and my girl Ruby is from Tennessee. Another crewmate is from Haines, AK, with others coming from New York, New Jersey, Oregon, and California - so we're a well-rounded crew! I just found out that one of the crews in the field just found the first Maui Parrotbill of the season - a very big deal for us all!
Today we are attending B-3 training, which covers airplane and helicopter safety, then tomorrow we are hiking back out to our field sites for a 12-day trip. I'm sure I'll have some stories to share, and I'll try to write more about our job and the project we're working on. Till next time...mahalo for reading, and aloha!
This is my very first time "blogging", pretty exciting huh? We can't use MySpace at work, so it seemed like this was the next-best way to try to keep in touch with everyone. So much has happened since arriving in Hawai'i at the beginning of January...a few highlights include the Bulldawgs beating the tar out of UH in the Sugar Bowl (we had to leave the bar early to avoid angry Hawai'i fans!)...our first helicopter ride out to our field sites...snorkeling, sunbathing, bodysurfing...seeing native forest birds in Hanawi NAR...watching humpack whales breaching off the coast...it's been pretty cool so far!
Brad and I are on a crew of 9 folks, and 6 of us live in a small 2 Bed/1 Bath "cottage" about 1/2 mile from the office. Everybody is very fun, mellow, and respectful of space and alone time, which definitely helps with the cramped living quarters! It's really not that bad, and because we're on a rotating field schedule at this point, we will rarely all be there at the same time. We've got a few fellow southerners on the crew as well - besides Brad and myself, one guy hails from Alabama (went to Auburn...boo!) and my girl Ruby is from Tennessee. Another crewmate is from Haines, AK, with others coming from New York, New Jersey, Oregon, and California - so we're a well-rounded crew! I just found out that one of the crews in the field just found the first Maui Parrotbill of the season - a very big deal for us all!
Today we are attending B-3 training, which covers airplane and helicopter safety, then tomorrow we are hiking back out to our field sites for a 12-day trip. I'm sure I'll have some stories to share, and I'll try to write more about our job and the project we're working on. Till next time...mahalo for reading, and aloha!
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