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.

sorry for not posting anything the last few days. i guess i just haven't felt like it. but, i'm baaaack (please try to contain your joy and excitement). not too much has gone on recently. i had the last two days off which i spent hiking around a bit in the rain, reading and relaxing and, of course, taking pictures for all of you to see. the first two pictures are of somewhat random objects found in front of our facility. the first is our giant sign describing who we are and the other is our strange little hawaiian man who is hopefully blessing our birds with fertility! if you continue up the road from our facility you will run into another avian facility that we work closely with called mfbrp (the maui forest bird recovery project). here lives a bunch of people (when they're not camping out in the field) who are lucky enough to go out and do field work with native hawaiian birds. they do behavioral observations, mist netting, nest searching, and also are the ones we go to when we need another bird or two for out captive propagation program. they actually just brought us two new male maui parrotbills less than a month ago. you can see their sign to the left which has a super cool endangered maui native bird (which we unfortunately don't have any of at our facility but there are some at our sister facility on the main island) called a crested honeycreeper or 'akohekohe. to the right is a real picture of the honeycreeper which i didn't take seeing as i haven't had the pleasure of meeting one yet! they are very silly looking birds, but very cute at the same time. i would definitely love to get the chance to study them further in the future!

continuing up the road, i noticed a cool warning sign describing the penalties for harming any of our birds. i was surprised, and very pleased, to see how steep those penalties were for any malice brought upon our birds (in case you didn't know, you can click on any of my pictures to make them larger so you can see and read them more clearly). i guess being endangered has it's perks after all! ;p

now for today. we had yet more goslings hatch today which is exciting. you can see a picture of one of our new nene families to the left. i love the face on dad in the lower right corner. he was definitely giving me the third degree (hissing and honking) for bothering his new family. in order to be sure that all of the new goslings are doing well, we weigh them and band them at about three days old. you can see a picture of my fellow intern, natalie, and a mbcc employee, karen, checking out one of our little guys. after a thorough checking over and quick banding, we weigh them all and then take them back out to their parents. we then have to redo this every week or so when they're little because they grow so fast that their bands will start to cut into their leg if we don't keep an eye on it. that happened to me once with a gambel's quail at liberty (don't worry, i caught it before it got too bad and she healed up perfectly) and i will certainly never let that happen on my watch again! speaking of babies... our final kauai gossling is now pipping and i get to be on hatchling watch tonight. i will definitely take pictures of him coming out of the egg if i am lucky enough to see it! he should come out in the next 6 hours or so because i just checked on him and he has a couple of pretty good cracks going. so exciting!! on a final nene note, here's a pic of a non-breeding pair taking it easy on a sunny day. they have a rough life don't they?!

today was my first day doing the 'alala routine. unfortunately as i got out my camera to take pictures i realized i had left the battery sitting on the charger. :[ sorry guys!! i will definitely take pictures of everyone next time i'm on routine although i don't think it's for another week. let me tell you about how awesome these birds are though. they are extremely intelligent and very curious birds. one of them, niele (pronounced ne-aylay) is by far the sweetest bird i've met. she unfortunately is a feather picker and cannot fly because she intentionally breaks all of her wing feathers off when she molts them in, but she can hop better than a kangaroo. she hops from perch to perch all over the ceiling which is about 20 feet up and back down to the floor. today when i went in to clean her enclosure she hopped down to the ground and followed me around for a while making cute little cooing noises and nibbling on my clothes. now i know this isn't something we really want to see from any of these birds because the ultimate goal would be to build up a steady enough population for them to be released. but, i can't help but have my heart go out to the sweet little crow who welcomed me into her life without any questions. it makes me so sad to think there are only 50 of these wonderful birds left and only POSSIBLY two of them are left in the wild. in fact, after reading seeking the sacred raven by mark jerome walters (which i encourage all of you to go read - you can borrow my copy if you want) i learned a lot about the struggle people have made to keep these crows around after everything we did to bring them to the brink of extinction. it really is a tragic book about dashed hopes and birds that didn't make it, but despite it all they're hanging in there and hopefully someday we can have them flying free in kona again.

in other news, something very exciting happened to me today. we have had a "wild" male nene that has decided to come and visit us for the past couple weeks which is pretty cool. we named him vermont because his state band letters are VT. unfortunately he is totally stressing out our captive nene because he stands right outside the pens near where the females are sitting on eggs or goslings. this of course makes the parents very nervous and they try to attack him to get him away but can't reach him. so, today we decided we'd better catch him up and have the u.s. fish and wildlife service come pick him up and take him back to the other side of haleakala where he should be. three of us surrounded him and thanks to my massive amount of bird catching experience at liberty i snagged him. i just held my first nene gosling yesterday and today i got to hold an adult, better yet, a wild adult! it was really awesome to see him up close. he's so much smaller than the canada geese i'm used to and the feathers on his neck really do have strange but beautiful patterns in them. also, their feet have much less webbing and spikier claws than normal geese because they are converted for walking on volcanic rock. i know i sound like a nerd, but it was awesome to see all of this up close. i even helped clean up a small abrasion he had on his left wing tip (see how much liberty has taught me!). so, all in all, my day was quite exciting! i will now go curl up with the hawaiian honeycreepers by h. douglass pratt that i borrowed from the bird library here and learn about the amazing adaptive radiation of honeycreepers on these isles (p.s. if you have a spare $190 lying around you can feel free to buy it for me. just kidding!). so enjoy the pictures of vermont while he was still roaming the property and send him good wishes for his travels home tomorrow!