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.