Aloha all,
This week was action-packed, with a semi-personnel change on 13 May. Jordan departed the island, which was a bittersweet goodbye. I am happy he is getting to return to Portland in time for the World Cup and for his grandma’s birthday. Shoutout Jordan’s Grandma!
I’m not one for all the sappy garbage (I’m from the East Coast), but I’ll say that Jordan and I became very close friends over the last year and I’m sad that he’s gone. He was a hard worker with a unique thoughtfulness about him, and his infinite curiosity and interest in wild things made me appreciate him. He was very good at finding Verbesina and if I ever had a task that required walking to the other side of the island, I would ask Jordan to do it knowing that he would.
On Jordan’s last day, he transected RTE7.1 with us and helped remove 800 lbs of marine debris from the beaches. He is a winner. He also has a beard now, and I hope his family likes it. Jordan walked more than 250 miles transecting the island looking for Verbesina during his time here.
4 new folks arrived: Naomi & Diane from KAC and Mack & Calypso as the NMFS crew. It’s certainly a change, and I’m not sure any of us are really used to other voices yet, but we are trying our best to not be awkward. I think it’s easy to tell that we’ve been on an island by ourselves. The offload day went smoothly and we are appreciative of all the NMFS folks who helped set up tents/camp for our seal team. I was awkward and forgot to make eye contact with people. Shoutout to Glauco.
Other than the new people being here, it’s been business as usual.
I’ve got some exciting bird news to share! I hit 350 band resights for the season, with some very special birds this last week. One of the Brown Boobies is 21 years old, and we also have a nesting ʻAoʻū (Christmas Shearwater) who is at least 27 years of age — the new* oldest known Christmas Shearwater ever recorded.
I tallied as many birds as I could on Global Big Day, with many exciting behaviors observed. We are getting close to 200 pākalakala (Gray-backed Tern) nests. I wonder which island hosts the title for the most abundant Gray-backed Tern breeding population.
Other bird news includes a Pueo Kai (Short-eared Owl), which I only saw from a distance, so I reported it as “Bird sp.” on eBird. The Kermadec Petrel returned & Tristram’s Storm-Petrels are fledging.
I have a new side project recording audio of as many species and behaviors as I can manage over the next month. I will be targeting pākalakala since they are my favorite, and I think there are only 8 recordings of them in Hawaiʻi in the Macaulay Library.
I spend all my time thinking about birds. And Jordan haha
Nick
