so something incredibly crazy happened to me recently. a few of us mbcc'ers were at the beach minding our own business and kicking around a soccer ball in the sand. i kicked it to someone who was standing in front of the incoming waves and as i looked, i noticed some movement in the waves. i quickly realized it was a dorsal fin and tail fin of a large creature sticking out where the waves were breaking and i also realized that it was unmistakably the exact shape of fins that a shark would have and was only about 3 feet off of the shore. i, of course, immediately ran over to where i had just seen the "shark" and scanned the waves to see if it would appear again. yep, a few seconds later i saw it swimming out of the wave breaks again, and this time a large fish jumped about 8 feet into the air in front of it. i then realized that this was most definitely a shark and i should probably tell the nearby swimmers to be careful. i honestly never thought there would be a time in my life that i would yell out "shark" without it being in a joking manner, but here it was and it was awesome! now before anyone gets worried, this was only a 4'-5' shark and was some sort of reef shark which only take small prey and have never been known to attack humans. it was still crazy to actually see one right off shore and it kind of ruined my sense of safety for the ocean. i used to think, "oh, i'm still only ten feet from shore, certainly no large dangerous creatures come in this close or they'd get washed up to shore." well now i know that is incredibly naive and the more research i've done i see that even the scariest tiger and great white sharks come all the way up to the shoreline at times when hunting. *sigh* i will now have to concentrate much harder when playing in the surf to help keep my imagination from getting the best of me. this really was one of the coolest things that i've ever seen, though, and it brings me a whole new respect for these most ancient of fish.

another cool thing that happened this week was that our juvenile puaiohi are finally getting to go free! they left today for their native island of kauai where they will spend about two weeks in cages getting used to the natural forests. After that they will be released! of course, a team will stay out there providing supplemental food for the pu's for a few more weeks until they learn to hunt and forage on their own. i am so excited (and nervous) for them to finally reach freedom and a chance to perpetuate their species in the wild like it was always meant to be. i have included a picture of a newly hatched pu so you can see why i find these guys so endearing.

as part of the process of making sure all of the pu's were fit for release, a veterinarian from the san diego zoo came over and helped us to perform complete physicals on each one to make sure they are physically fit for release. we also took fecals from all of them in order to check for the existence of internal parasites that could be passed on to wild pus. the final task was bleeding each of the birds. bleeding is just as it sounds, drawing blood from the bird (often from the jugular in the neck) to be tested for avian malaria and any other blood born illness a bird could have. i actually got to bleed a few puaiohi which was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. it may sound morbid but putting a needle into a tiny 35g bird's neck and placing it into an even tinier vein really gives you a rush. i am used to holding fragile lives in my hands, but to do such a delicate procedure on one brought me a great sense of confidence that i do have what it takes to make it in this field. i am so excited to have had this experience and expect to put it to use in the future when i start doing field work that often involves genetic studies that require bleeding of many wild caught birds (don't worry, they get released shortly afterward).

in yet more exciting news i just so happen to be visiting my friend, laura, in kauai on wednesday!! and to make this even more exciting my manager told me that laura and i will be allowed to go down to the field site that all of our puaiohi kids are temporarily staying at for a day! i am so excited to see our pu's one last time and see the habitat they will soon be living in and the other native birds that live there. i will bring back plenty of pictures of everything so you guys can experience it all with me. did i mention that i'm so excited?!!

also, did i mention that i love our crows?!

it's been quite a long last month and i haven't found the time or energy to blog as of late, but i think i'm back up for the task! one of the new things i've found to do here in maui is to volunteer at the maui humane society on one of my days off from the facility. i am in charge of walking and socializing the dogs that are there. now you may think, "wow, that doesn't seem like a very big deal." but it is more important that one would think. many of the dogs come in badly abused with cuts all over them or covered in ticks and extremely emaciated from neglect. despite all they've been through, many of them still want nothing more than to lick your face and show you the love they wish you'd return. it breaks my heart to see how much these dogs give without having ever had anyone show them any kindness in return. thus i walk and play with these dogs in order to give them at least 15 minutes worth of the joy that they have so deserved in their life. volunteering there is definitely one of the hardest things i've ever done since i know that it is a shelter that euthanizes animals that are not adopted after a certain amount of time. when i see the same dog week after week i begin to worry, "will i see them next week and if not was it because they were adopted and if so how much longer do they have left here?" even if none of the dogs i walk ever get adopted i want to know that they had some love in their life and that's really the only thing that keeps bringing me back there when my heart has such a hard time dealing with it.

on a happier note, i finally got a few pictures of one of our maui parrotbill in his enclosure. i'm actually pretty proud of these pictures because these guys have the worst ADHD i've ever seen and can't stand still for more than a second. so, capturing a picture of more than just their behind hopping away from you can be quite tricky. this is our single male, gonzo, who will hopefully be getting a mate soon as breeding season is already beginning. hopefully we'll get at least one parrotbill chick this year as i hear they are incredibly cute and have included a picture of a newly hatched chick from a couple years ago. i have also included a copy of an amazing watercolor painting of a couple of our mapas that a past intern recently painted. it definitely makes me want to get back into drawing and maybe even move up to painting, especially now that i actually have subject matter that is so rare and so beautiful and needs so badly to be shown to the world.

is there anything cuter than these two little guys?! happy 2007 everyone!

it has been a while since i've had a chance to write on here. sorry about that! it's been crazy over here as we are getting everything super shined up for our iacuc (institutional animal care and use committee) inspection next week. always a fun thing, but it's good to know that all organizations like this are kept at certain standards for the animals' sake.

maui has blessed me with many beautiful sights since i've been here. the other day all of us mbcc'ers went down to the beach and had a picnic as the sun went down. the sunset was definitely beautiful over the water although i think arizona's sunsets tend to be more bright and vibrant than even this was. maui also tends to have a lot of misty rain which leads to me seeing rainbows pretty much every other day. they never cease to amaze me. i recently saw one that was so huge it seemed to span the entire island and it was a complete one! it was truly awesome. i also got to see my first "rainbow end" yesterday. i am sorry to report that the pot of gold at the bottom of a rainbow is, in fact, a myth. i know many of your hopes and childhood dreams have just been crushed.

along with amazing natural wonders, it has been a gift to see our little nene goslings grow up. our oldest ones are currently at day 38 and i will try to get a good picture for you guys soon. it was misting today when i was cleaning in there so the pictures came out a bit gray. i have included pictures of goslings in some of the other pens at various ages and you can see how big they've gotten and how they're getting their "big goose" feathers. i'm so proud of them, hehe. i've also included some pictures of our most recent nene hatchlings from the eggs we received from kauai. unfortunately, these guys are two weeks younger than any of the goslings that hatched out here and none of the families would accept them as their own. poor guys. they're now somewhat confused as to whether they're human or goose, but we're doing our best to keep them from becoming too imprinted on us. it's just hard when they're so small and can't fend for themselves so we have to give them lots of hands on care. they're finally big enough to put them outside during the day with one of our non-paired females. she doesn't treat them like little goslings, though, so we have to watch them carefully. in another couple weeks they should be big enough to stay outside all day and night and fend for themselves, though, so hopefully their identity crisis' will be put to an end soon enough!

first off i would like to wish everyone a merry christmas! it was a weird one this year with no family or close friends to spend it with. we had a good time here, though, with a "grilled christmas" dinner. nine of us got together and everyone brought something tastey. i made some veggie and tofu kabobs which i'd have to say were the highlight of the evening. then we all sat around our christmas tree and opened presents. it was definitely not the norm, but we had fun! and as you can see, leis are integral for all holidays while in hawaii! i'm sure everyone will be wearing them for new years as well.

in other "not so much" news, i'd like to discuss something i have come to realize as of late. it is rather amazing i can have now lived in two of the sunniest states in the union and no one can tell! people keep thinking i'm a tourist here due to my lack of tan. now i normally wouldn't jump at getting skin cancer in the name of acceptance, but i may have to make an exception on this one. luckily i've been able to go to the beach at least once a week as of late so i may not be the white girl you once knew when i get back to arizona!

speaking of getting a tan. here are some pics of the awesome place i went snorkeling at today. we walked about two miles up a lava field that extended out into the ocean. it was definitely not friendly to the sandal clad beachgoer, but i made it with only minor wounds and the sights along the way were absolutely amazing. combining black lava and bright blue ocean makes for quite the picturesque scenery. the snorkeling spot we were headed to was aptly named "fish bowl" due to, surprisingly enough, it being a large round inlet full of fish! we saw lots of cool ones including a moorish idol with a fin trail over a foot long and a few stunning yellow trumpetfish. good times were had by all!


so since i can't forget about my fine feathered friends that have brought me all of the way out here to maui, i will leave you with some very endearing pictures of a couple very special 'alala. these guys make all of my days brighter and when i get lonely i look at them and remember that nothing can be as lonely as being one of the very last of your entire species and they seem to smile through it, thus, so should i.

today was another excellent day. i went snorkeling for the first time!! it was totally awesome! sometimes when i'm swimming in the water i get a little nervous about going out too far because i get these stupid visions of shark attacks in my head. granted, a 20 foot tiger shark was seen in maui waters just a couple of weeks ago chewing on a sea turtle and they're known to eat anything in their path whether it be man, creature, or inanimate object, but still i feel it's ridiculous to be scared in the water. well, i've found a way to solve any of my ocean going fears... put on a mask!! seeing what's going on around you does wonders for calming the imagination and the awesome fish swimming all over the place doesn't hurt much either. in fact, i felt so confident with my mask on i actually wanted to see one of the white tip reef sharks that frequent maui waters (don't worry, they're not known to be aggressive toward humans). unfortunately, i wasn't that lucky, but i did get to see tons of other cool stuff including a green sea turtle!! it was my main goal for this trip to see a turtle and i'm very happy that my wish was granted. this was a really large turtle as well (probably 3 feet long) and he was just chilling on the coral taking a nap. i was able to swim up right next to him without scaring him off. he did open his eyes and look a bit nervous so i backed up, but getting so close was truly amazing! they truly are beautiful creatures. i also saw tons of other cool things including various species of sea urchins. some were huge with fat red spines and others had really long thin black spines with bright blue ones inside. they were gorgeous. there were also plenty of sea stars of different colors and thousands of different fish. i won't name them all, but i was especially excited to see a couple of flounders and two species of pufferfish which are pretty much my favorite fish ever. there were spotted pufferfish that were itsy bitsy and some giant ones that were over a foot long. there was also one box puffer i was super excited to see. they're spectacular with a blue body covered in yellow spots on the sides. pictures can't do justice to their true beauty. there were also tons of angels and other colorful fish including the picasso triggerfish which has the best hawaiian name ever: humuhumunukunuku! unfortunately, i didn't get an underwater camera for this trip to take pictures (so any of the underwater ones i've included are not my own) because i didn't want to have to deal with that on my first time out. i will definitely take one in the future though, so don't worry too much. ;] as well as seeing a ton of cool sea creatures (although no sharks, eels, or octopus *crie*) i also found some nifty souvenirs. they're all explained in the image i've included. i also collected a bunch of large urchin spines that i plan to make into something interesting. i'll keep you posted on that one haha. that's about it for my fabulous underwater outing. as a side note, i've included some pictures of the burning of a sugar cane field. i understand why they do it, but it's sad to see so much pollution in my new paradise. in fact, it's sad to see so much sugarcane in maui period. to think that the vast miles of cane that covers about 15% of maui used to be forests full of native birds makes me really sad. it never ceases to amaze me when looking at the extent of change we've procured on the world in order to fit our own needs and how much it has affected the native ecosystems negatively. *sigh* i guess that's why i have a job here though... but really it's not worth it.

well it's been a couple days since i've written on here so, of course, i have lots to share! i have wed/thurs off so on thursday the other intern, natalie, and i decided to go on a whale watch and it was soooo awesome! we went out on a boat with an organization called the pacific whale foundation. they're a really awesome research group that studies whales and other marine life all over the planet. you can check out all of the cool stuff they're finding out at the link above. anyway, so we went out on a tour with them and about 10 minutes out we spotted our first whale coming up for air! when you think about a humpback whale, you know that they're big, but when all 35-40 feet of them are right next to you it's breathtaking. we had a whale in our sights pretty much for the entire next hour and a half. it was absolutely amazing. one even breached about 20 feet from our boat. i'm sure that was absolutely phenomenal to see, but of course i was at the other side of the boat at the moment and only saw her falling back into the water. i, of course, ran as fast as i could to the other side of the boat and luckily she stayed for a bit to do a couple pectoral fin slaps and a tail slap before disappearing back into the deep. another whale also made quite an appearance by lolling around about 50 feet from our boat half submerged on his back. he did a long series of pectoral fin slaps and about 6 tail slaps in a row before going under (he was up for about 15 minutes playing around!). and in case any of you were wondering there is a very special reason why whales play out of water so much in maui. they spend half of their lives up in the icy but nutrient rich waters of alaska, so when they migrate back down to hawaii they still have a pretty thick layer of blubber and they tend to get pretty hot in our warm waters. luckily, their pectoral fins and tail are covered in thousands of tiny blood vessels so that when they wave them out of water, the cool ocean breeze helps to act as a built in ac unit and cool the whales down. it works out nicely for them and even better for me because we got to see so much amazing whale action that i wasn't even too sad we didn't get to see any green sea turtles or dolphins! besides, hopefully i'll see those next week when i go snorkeling! as a side note, i would also just like to say that when you see those pictures of the beautiful deep blue ocean on the movies, they are totally real in maui! the water here is just so clear and "clean." no wonder the humpbacks come here to mate and to have offspring. well i guess it could also be because their main predators, orcas, aren't here, but still the gorgeous warm water has to have something to do with it!

so i've been a little under the weather the last couple days and wasn't up to posting, but i'm feeling better now so here's what's happened the last couple days. the little gosling made it out of his egg. you can see the little pip-hole he made around midnight in the picture to the left and to the right is him just out of the egg at 6am! he's still sleepy and wet. after he dried off a bit we then moved him to an incubator and since he had no siblings to hang out with, we gave him a feather duster mom to hang out with. he loved her dearly, but obviously that wasn't quite going to cut it for the long term, so today (at three days old) he got to go out with a real family that actually, conveniently, hatched out the same day as him. we snatched him and the four goslings from our captive parents' clutch and checked them all out to make sure they were all in good health and banded them so we could tell them apart. We then brought all five of them back out to the parents and let them go. the poor little kauai gosling was so confused when he first stepped out of his carrier onto a fresh yard of grass. his new mom was trying so hard to herd him over to all of the other goslings, but he was scared and confused since, so far in his short life, he had never seen anything besides the inside of a hatcher and a feather duster. he caught on quickly though and within a couple minutes he was running around with everyone else as if they were his own flesh and blood. so, thankfully, we have had yet another nene success story! oh, and for anyone curious, we currently have 18 nene goslings running around our facility with a possibility of eight more to come within the next week!

later in the day we re-banded our first batch of goslings that i talked about in an earlier post including our original three kauai babies. they are now at day 11 and you can see how much larger they are! it's amazing how fast they grow and how much angrier the parents get when you take their babies away for just a couple of minutes. luckily, the parents calm down immediately upon their youngsters' return.


another fun aspect of today was that i was on the 'alala string again and this time i brought a camera! we currently have sixteen 'alala at our facility and all of them have their own unique personalities. some are very sweet, others stand-offish, some sneakily devious, and others slighty nutty. it's a very sad state that these poor crows are in. most believe that the 'alala are extinct in the wild (the last wild pair hasn't been seen since 2002 so they're probably right) so the species' last hopes reside with the 51 birds currently in captive care. unfortunately captivity is tough on intelligent birds like the 'alala. they tend to go a little crazy when they are stuck in a steel box all day with nothing to do. at our facility we have done a lot to make these birds' lives better and more fulfilling, but unfortunately some have had a hard time getting over the hardships of their past. hopefully someday soon we will have full scale native plant gardens in every aviary; all of the aviaries will have natural flooring; aviaries will be separated far enough apart so that pairs will not feel claustrophobic with other pairs right next door, but close enough so that they can have friends to talk to; and, also, that there will be more freedom for individuals to pick a mate they're compatible with rather than one that's merely the most genetically different from them (although, of course, genetics are very important). i think that if we could successfully implement all of these things, the birds would be much happier and, thus, able to concentrate on things such as producing offspring which is so crucial for this critically endangered species' survival. although some of these things cannot immediately be rectified, we are working to make each bird as happy as possible on an immediate basis. every day we try to scatter their food around to make them forage and spend more time doing something interesting. we give them different toys to play with. we also give them a different treat every day which comes with a special task they must perform in order to get that treat. today i gave each bird a pinecone with bits of kiwi and frozen crickets hidden around in it and placed that pinecone in a hard to reach spot inside each of the birds' exhibits. Each crow then had to figure out how to get to the pinecone, how to knock it down, and then where each of the tastey food morsels was hidden inside. it was fun to watch and even more fun for them to play with!

finally, at the end of the day, lindsey and i had to capture one of our new maui parrotbill, "hank," in order to prepare him for his trip tomorrow to our sister facility on the big island. mapas are smart little birds so it took some work to catch him, but we finally did. you can see how brilliantly yellow the wild males are and just how long that parrotbill beak is. you can also see that he was none too pleased at being manhandled in such an unbecoming way. he was sure to scream many warnings and obscenities at us after being let go for our injustice. on an interesting note, after studying the song patterns of these recently acquired mapas, we found a call that has never been heard before. we're not sure what it means, but it's an exciting first step into learning more about these mysterious little passerines.