so obviously it's been quite some time since i last wrote, but i plan on getting back into the mix of things. since my last post i have said my farewells to maui, moved over 5000miles to maine to work with seabirds on maine's costal islands and am now back in arizona again!

i will definitely post some pictures and fun stories from my time in maine, but for now i just wanted to put something out there to tell everyone i'm still alive and doing what i love to do: work towards saving wildlife! thank you for all of your support with my many adventures and the ones i still have to come. i have included a beautiful picture of an osprey simply because i can!

so baby season is now in full force. we have the last of our nene on the way. i have included a picture of our newest gosling to hatch. she was the only fertile egg of the two her mother laid and it was such a tiny egg (1/3 the size of a normal nene egg) we didn't think it would make it full term. she made it though and popped out in perfect health despite being incredibly tiny. it will be interesting to see if she ever grows up to be a normal sized nene. either way, her mother loves her and showers her with affection. i guess it pays to be the only child!

our final nene nest of the season is currently at day 24 of a 30 day incubation period. nene, like other waterfowl, are somewhat unique in the way they incubate their eggs. they actually only lay one egg a day but they allow their eggs to sit in the nest without being incubated until they have laid their entire clutch. the eggs can actually lay dormant and not begin growing or die as long as no excess heat is provided to them. this is efficient for nene since they are precotial birds (their young can get up and run around very shortly after birth) and need all of their young to hatch out at the same time so that they can all forage together. this clutch is special in that it actually consists of six eggs which is the most laid so far this year. i know the picture only shows four, but there are a couple more down there staying warm beneath the bark. also, don't get to thinking nene find magical nest tubs full of saw dust out in the wild. normally they would form a scrape on the ground and add a few twigs and some leaves to lay their eggs in, but for some reason we take the eggs out of their own nest and place it in the tub.

our puaiohi have also been going baby crazy. the young parent reared chick has finally fledged and you can see it's cute self covered in juvenile spotted feathers. it will keep those for about six or seven months until they molt into adult plumage. i have also included a picture of our first hand raised chick at day two. this is an example of an altritial bird (one which is completely helpless at birth, unlike the nene, and needs constant parental attention to survive) as it is featherless except for a little fuzz on its head and can't even see. an interesting fact that can be seen in the picture is that for its first three days of life we feed it nothing but cricket gonads. apparently that is the most nutritious part of the cricket. who would have thought!?

i will leave you with a cute picture of a non-native but still interesting creature i often find running around the facility. it is a rainbow skink and they are quite small, only about three inches. this one was hiding out on some old a-frames we put in nene pens so they can hide out from the rain.

it's been one crazy week so far. the topic of today's blog will be 'alala! mostly because i love them, but also because they've been such hight maintenace lately. let me first introduce you to the newest member of the mbcc family: kiwa'a (kih-vah-ah). she's quite the catch. intelligent, beautiful, knows how to make all of the right caws, but also a bit of a man-eater. she is the new girlfriend of kela (kay-lah) and has already given him a run for his money. i did introductions between the two on friday and things started off great. she solicited him, he solicited her... "whooing" ensued (male crows actually make a "whoo" noise to the females during the courtship process) and copulations were attempted (but he fell off twice). everything was sunshine and roses and i could see new life being created on the horizon and then suddenly it was all shattered. who knows why, maybe she can't help but sabotage every relationship she's ever had or maybe she's just turned on by violence, but kiwa'a decided to bring the honeymoon to a screeching halt. she began to viciously attack kela to the point that she slammed him into the side of the enclosure four separate times causing him to plummet fifteen feet to the ground each time. in the midst of this lindsey and i are running around trying to catch falling crows and break up the madness. finally kela was snagged up and rushed out of the aviary from his crazed girlfriend. she was eventually ushered back into her side of the aviary and he was returned to his. all over right? wrong! i went to go check on him to see how he was doing and he was so scared that he was found laying on the ground hiding under a rotting log. poor guy! not really the best "first girlfriend" experience a guy can have. don't worry. he's doing better now and him and kiwa'a even sit next as close to each other as they can get despite a hatch and wall being between them. hopefully she deserves his forgiveness.

in other crow news, kauila (kah-ooo-weee-lah), has finally had his surgery to remove his eye with the burst cornea. it's a definite bummer that it had to come to that, but at least he won't have to deal with the extreme pain it was causing him anymore. since even vain crows don't get the luxury of a glass eye, the vets ended up having to cut off the edges of his eyelids so that when they sutured them together they would stick and not just reopen like eyelids normally do. everything there is healing perfectly so we're all really pleased with that. unfortunately, his life is not back to normal yet. right after the surgery he developed very severe swelling on his left wing. we don't exactly know how it happened. some think he cooked it under one of the heat lamps, other fear he had an alergic reaction to a venomous bite, but whatever it is, it's serious. his wing has completely swelled up with fluid to the point it's seeping out of his feather folicles. at least it appears that it's beginning to heal as it is scabbing over in some places. it's just a bummer that he was almost to the point of not having to be caught up for meds for a while and now he's back to square one with not only meds being given but also salt wraps, physical therapy and massages. some day he'll get to go back to his big aviary next to his gorgeous girlfriend, but it appears it won't be any time soon.

in other news the rest of the crows are doing great (with the exception of ali'i who busted a toenail and dripped blood all over the aviary before we could catch him up and apply quickstop to clot the bleeding) and living life to the fullest. you can see nani (gnaw-knee) enjoying a tastey treat she enjoyed working for. we do our best to not only give the crows fun things, but also ones that require them to use natural skills they'd be using in the wild. nani simply knocked the jar down, stepped on it, and pulled the paper out, but others are more inventive. neile (knee-A-lay) ended up pulling out some paper and using a stick to prod the grapes out of her jar. such smartie pants'!!

it's been a crazy week so far. our puaiohi began laying a couple weeks ago which is exceptionally early in the season, but i guess they can do whatever they want in captivity. one of our female's eggs have proven to be infertile, but i saw her and her mate copulating the other day (which was a little embarrassing since they did it right next to me) so i'm sure future clutches will fare much better. one of our other females that we have affectionately named "green mama" due to her having a single green band also laid. She is actually the oldest captive pu in the program and was caught back in 1995 and is stud book number five! that's pretty impressive considering we're up in the 220's now. so, unfortunately she's probably past her prime egg years and is quite a bit tubby so she was not given a mate this year to make her egg fertile. we did give her an egg from another pair that wasn't sitting but unfortunately it seems the egg died early in incubation. i'm pretty bummed about it because green mama seems to have a very motherly instinct and really deserved to have a chick to raise this year. i have included a picture of green mama sitting in the big beautiful nest she built. now all of that is a little sad, but don't worry there is good news! our final pair to lay eggs seems to currently be doing much better than all of the others. i was on forest birds today and saw the female bringing the worms i gave her up to her nest and feeding her beggy little chick or two. i couldn't make out two distinct peepers, but puaiohi traditionally lay two eggs in a clutch so we're hoping that there are two little guys in there and one of them is a little younger and harder to hear above the sound of the older sibling. they are currently at day 6 from when we believe they hatched and they only have less than two weeks before they pass from their tiny, pink and helpless hatchling stage to being a full grown fledgling that can start to leave the nest and learn to forage with it's parent. birds never cease to amaze me with how quickly they grow up. one day they're depending on you for food and warmth and three weeks later they're ready to fly off on their own. speaking of flying, aren't fledgling nene stretching their wings hilarious! that picture is a few weeks old and our goslings have lost all of their fuzz and are hardly distinguishable from the adults now except for their "dirty" looking neck that hasn't grown in the adult white feathers.

in other bird news we have had some issues with one of our crows, kauila. he has had eye problems since he was brought back into captivity after his brief release into the wild. it seems to have stemmed from his eyelashes growing into his left eye and causing problems. unfortunately, these problems got worse recently when the cornea in his eye burst. i feel so bad for him because it's a daily battle to keep his eye intact. we give him medication all day and it gets better and better, but over night it collapses and deflates and we find him in the morning with a sunken in eye that is extremely painful and sensitive. i have included a picture of me holding him and it shows his eye at a good period where it is inflated and bright, but there is still a white unceration in the center where the cornea burst. i believe that he does, amazingly, still have some minimal eyesight out of that eye, but probably not for long because the vets from san diego are coming to do surgery on it. i will be glad to have the whole painful process over for him, but i worry he will have a difficult time maneuvering in his tall aviary with no depth perception. i will work hard to give him lots of awesome perches connected together so he can feel confident moving around and not isolate himself to one place in the aviary and starve. poor boy.

in happier news we received a new crow on friday. i don't have any pictures of her yet because i didn't want to scare her but i'll get some soon. her name is kiwa'a (key-vah-ah) and she is a super smart and very beautiful crow. she is the new girlfriend for our male kela (K-la). It's great to see that they have really taken to each other and hopefully they can be socialized soon and may actually become a breeding pair this year. i have included a very endearing picture of kela checking out the camera with interest and a second one of him being very masculine. male 'alala have chin feathers and head feathers that they fluff up when they are cawing and doing other sorts of "manly" crow things. isn't he handsome!

okay so i went to kauai a month ago and i'm just now getting around to writing about it. sorry!! but it's worth the wait! kauai is definitely the most beautiful place i've ever been. maui's amazing but kauai is at least 5x's as green and doesn't have half of it taken over by sugar cane fields. plus, up in the wailua forest reserve (where i happened to go hiking on one of my days there) it is actually the rainiest place on earth, logging over 400 inches of rain a year!! i wish i would have known that BEFORE i got there.

so the first day i came in, laura met me at the airport and i got to meet her family for the first time, which is sad because she's been one of my best friends for a couple of years now. they are all very cool and lots of fun to hang out with. we set up camp on a beach and hung out all day snorkeling and beaching it up. that night was my first night camping out, which is also very sad, my parents failed me in that aspect. ;] as a highlight of the night, we had a cute friend join us in our tent. she was a beach cat which i named mahana and she was the sweetest thing. kind of like basil when we first found her; always purring and wanting to be pet. i really wish i had thought to take a picture of her that night, but unfortunately that was not to be. camping out went great, though, until it started pouring rain and somehow it began to leak into the front of our tent. this was only the beginning of a rain filled weekend!

the next day was our fateful trip into the "swamp." it just so happened that the kauai forest bird recovery project was in the field with 11 of MY juvenile puaiohi that i've been raising for the last three months. These birds were in the process of being acclimated to their surroundings before being released. so, i thought it would be a fabulous idea for laura and i to go hike out to their camp and see my babies one last time before they were set free. the hike up to the alakai swamp in wailua was one of the most beautiful hikes i can even imagine. there were waterfalls, flowers, moss and best of all, native birds! never mind the fact it rained the entire eight hours we were out there, i was given the wrong trail directions to the kfbrp camp and we never found it, and that we happened to not bring rain gear and nearly froze to death, it was still the best hike i have ever possibly been on! the pictures provided give you a glimpse of the splendor we saw and the one of me holding a little leopard frog sort of shows just how incredibly soaked we both were. i didn't take as many pictures as i would have liked due to the fear that stopping would make the hike colder and also since my fingers were having a little difficulty moving properly, but honestly, i don't really mean to complain. we got to see one of the cutest little birds ever, the kauai elepaio ("L"-eh-pie-oh). these are such curious little birds and they followed us down the path with their tails in the air flitting back and forth across the trail watching us curiously. we were also lucky enough to see an apapane (ah-pah-pah-ne) flitting around on an ohia tree feeding on it's nectar. they are beautiful bright red birds with striking black wings and tail. seeing these guys was the highlight of my day! as we hiked back down the 8 mile trail to meet up with our ride home we stopped at a lookout overlooking the wailua mountains which are known as "hawaii's grand canyon." looking at the picture i've included you can see why! as a side note, although we didn't see any nene that day, we did find their droppings at the overlook, hehe.

after surviving our soaked and freezing but amazingly gorgeous hike, we were up for something a little more sunny the next day, which also just so happened to be laura's birthday! we hung out at the beach all day and soaked up the sun. we also got to see tons of sea turtles down on the shore eating red seaweed. Plus, we saw several humpback whales breaching and spouting out in the ocean. i never expected to see so much wildlife in kauai! it was spectacular.

saturday was my last day in kauai, but it was just as full of fun things to do and see. we stopped by at kauai's lighthouse in the kilauea point national wildlife refuge in hopes of seeing some seabirds. we were not disappointed. dozens of red-footed boobies were flying around in the thermals and others were roosting on the side of the cliff. i have always wanted to see a boobie and i was thrilled to see so many at once. and to top it all off, we also saw about a dozen nene that were hanging out near the lighthouse and were flying out to their daytime grazing grounds. it's great to see the hard work i put into taking care of these endangered species back at the facility paying off with wild ones flying free like they should. later we went to the beach and just happened to come while a monk seal was lounging on the beach. it was pretty funny because the nearby hotel had put up signs warning tourists not to try to pet the seal with caution tape all around the part of the beach the seal was on. it's nice to see some concern being shown for the native wildlife. after that we stopped by spouting horn to see the geyser of water that blows up out of a natural hole in some rocks on the side of the ocean. it wasn't going too strongly that day, but it was still pretty great to see.

so all in all, the trip was one of the best i've ever been on and it was so great to see laura for a few days. i've included a pic of some waves coming in on baldwin beach i took during my descent into maui (so sorry about the graininess, the plane window wasn't all too clean). i am so glad i got to go visit another of hawaii's amazing islands and even happier that i got to do it with laura.

i hope everyone wished arizona a very happy birthday today and in celebration planted a cactus, rescued a cactus wren, or gave a mouse to a rattlesnake. i <3>

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!