Aloha kākou! Enjoy our latest field blog from Nick 
Another great week on Hōlanikū! We finished our fourth full-island transect of the year, and it’s not even April! We’ve let 0 Verbesina plants mature, and that’s something to be excited about. I’m super proud of our hard-working team. One of the perks of being so efficient during our vegetation transects is that we typically have a “chiller” Friday that includes some other activities. This Friday, we hit the beaches for a shorebird survey, a marine debris survey, and a Hawaiian Monk Seal survey. We observed our first seal pups of the season! So exciting. We also observed 212 ‘Akekeke/ Ruddy Turnstone, 147 Kōlea / Pacific Golden-Plover, 4 Hunakai / Sanderling, 4 ‘Ūlili/ Wandering Tattler, and 1 Black-bellied Plover. Most of these numbers are a hefty increase from our survey two weeks ago, a great sign for the upcoming spring migration. I hope we see some new, exciting birds. There’s so many great shorebirds that need to visit.
I found the first Pākalakala / Gray-backed Tern nests this week, which was a nice surprise. I hadn’t expected them to start nesting yet, but we’re ready to monitor their colonies. Booby monitoring has been going great, lots of Masked Booby nests are still active, and Brown Booby eggs are being laid – another one of our favorite Friday activities. It’s going to start getting busier over the next few weeks, as we prepare to welcome our new island residents – but we’re all pretty devoted to monitoring our booby nests, as we’ve all come to have favorite pairs & favorite chicks.
It was an exciting week in camp, so I’ll try to cover most of the things I remember. Kayla began making kombucha, which is great because I LOVE kombucha. Jordan and Delia have been doing ab workouts nonstop, while I have been saying “I’ll join you next week” for the last month or so. We’ve enjoyed some really nice sunsets out at the pier, watching for sharks and the occasional honu passerby. I found a pretty sweet glass ball during the shorebird survey, which I’d say is about the size of a melon. Kayla made three breads, Delia made cupcakes with jam, and attempted crepes. Jordan made some righteous snickerdoodles that he’ll be eating during the movie tonight. Yesterday, I made chicken nuggets for dinner, which didn’t turn out all that bad. We made pierogies tonight, which reminded me of home because I eat them during Lent a lot (we sell them at my church’s Friday Fish Dinners). We painted a bit today, caught some sunshine, and enjoyed a lazy day. Jordan also crushed tin cans, which is his favorite camp chore.
We’ve been blessed with sunshine lately, which means the Verbesina has also been seeing lots of sunshine, which means a whole bunch of photosynthesis. Little does the Verbesina know, I’m going to get it this week.
A hui hou!
Nick
