19 January (88 days on island)
Let’s get the more serious topics out of the way before I move onto the very exciting topic that I’m sure you all know is coming! We treated 52.7 acres this week, and most of the time we are getting plants now before they start seeding, which is great! It does mean that you need to have a sharp eye to distinguish leaf shape at even the cotyledon stage, and if you’re looking for grasses, you need to be able to spot the tiny sprigs coming out of the sand. Sometimes this isn’t possible with all the other greenery around which blankets the ground like the sweet alyssum, which hides the very small baby plants. However, once the leaves pop out of this, the plant is generally still not of seeding size/age so we can still get it in time. Unfortunately, we did find one dropseed Verbesina this week though it was a rather weak plant. Beyond the treatment side of work, Jacob and I fixed up some wheelbarrows which were looking rather sorry for themselves; Nadia worked on transplanting natives that we want in certain areas; Tlell gathered lots of nohu seeds; Ryan got some important office work done, completed a monk-seal survey, and cleared the paths; we girdled more Heliotrope trees (HELFOE) on the south side of the island; I chopped down more dead HELFOE that pose a hazard to wildlife; while many other tidying and fixer-upper jobs were accomplished throughout camp by the crew, of the kind which are continuously required in order to keep a place like this up and running.
OK, drum roll please….. THE CHICKS ARE HERE! The ka‘upu (black-footed albatross) babies have started to appear, and I am just beside myself with excitement and cuteness overload. There aren’t very many yet, just the early eggs have started to hatch, but the time is here! At first when you look at a nest, everything seems normal. Then you see some eggshell fragments, and you know. The adults sit very tight on their babies when they are this small, (even tighter seemingly than they sat on the eggs), keeping them warm, dry, and protected under their brood pouch, so you don’t see them at this stage unless you’re lucky and the adult is readjusting themselves, or sitting up to cool their feet off, or sometimes, hilariously, the chick’s head will be poking out from under the adult’s butt, with the adult just contentedly sitting there. I was lucky enough the first day we saw the chicks to see what was potentially a tiny chick’s first feed (photo attached). On Friday when I was going down to the beach to do my laundry, I passed a nest where the adult was resting back on their metatarsals in the hot sun to cool off their feet, eyes half-closed, sphinx-like in their composure and repose, and between their legs in the nest bowl curled a little grey ball of fluff, like a tiny kitten. Its sides rose and fell gently as it slept. I gazed at them, thinking how peaceful the chick looked, and how, if I were to be that defenseless in this big, scary world, I would certainly want a fierce ka‘upu standing guard over me like that. I am so excited and, again, every day feel so privileged to be watching the saga of life unfold, the great wheels of biology turn, before my very eyes. It was pretty cool as well because on the First Chick Day, Nadia’s little sister had her own baby over on Big Island! Baby Elora, born on the same day we saw the first ka‘upu chicks. Continuing on the baby theme, we also saw our first fresh manu-o-Kū (white tern) chick. The FEET on this thing, oh my goodness! It’s like it was born with adult-sized feet! This is unsurprising to me since they hatch on a bare branch and have to cling onto it from day dot, so those big feet are certainly required. Good luck to all babies! We love you!
More cool things: another pod of humpbacks (or maybe the same ones as last week, who knows) off south point! It was wonderful to see their blows out in the deep blue ocean, and when they dove, their flukes came up and flashed in the sun. We saw one of the sub-adult short-tails again, the very first one we saw back in November. Koaʻeʻula (red-tailed tropicbirds) have been absolutely everywhere in the skies this week. Their favourite time to display is around midday in the hot sun – they don’t fly as much on cloudy or windy days. I’m not sure why this is, and haven’t looked it up yet. My theories: their white feathers and long red tail streamers flash more brilliantly in the peak of sunlight against the blue sky? Re the wind, their aerial displays are quite complex, so I guess when there’s a lot of wind, they can’t do their backwards ferris-wheel formations? I’ll need to do more reading on this. In any case, when the sky is that profound, hazy, sleepy blue it often was at the peak of heat this week, the koaʻeʻula were so numerous in the skies that they looked like snowflakes – fluttering, scattering, twirling, in the infinite sky.
In other news, the iwa (frigatebird) rattles have begun to be heard coming from the naupaka. I hope to soon see one displaying its big, impressive, red throat pouch, since I have not yet observed this myself. On Thursday as I was hanging up my laundry, I paused, because the moment was just so… Hōlanikū. Two manu-o-Kū sat on the washing-line frame, feet away from me, frowning down at me from those huge black eyes, and then nuzzling each other. The bright sun was behind them, and so I oriented myself so the sun was directly behind one of them, giving it a golden halo. A pair of mōlī (Laysan albatross) courted directly under the wet trousers I had just hung up, making all manner of intense sounds that I had grown very accustomed to, but which most people might find alarming. The koaʻeʻula wheeled in the sky above. Some moments just sort of encapsulate the lifestyle here, and this was one of them.
Finally, a moment I will remember a long time was my moon-walk on the beach at the start of the week. The moon was full, and there were large gaps between the cumulus clouds, meaning starlight and moonlight could come down. I got down to the beach, and everything was lit up. It was almost light daytime. The moon was so bright and clear, the lagoon was still and flat, there was no wind, and even the sound of the breakers on the reef was not as loud as normal. Gentle waves lapped on the beach, with just little, tiny rollers of foam a few inches high, which caught the moonlight and sparkled, giving the impression of bioluminescence. I turned and walked north a little ways, with albatross flying by occasionally. Sometimes I would see them: the ka‘upu like swift, dark spectres, the mōlī like graceful, pale ghosts – all floated on moonbeams. Other times, I did not see them, but instead felt their moonshadows cross me as I walked. The cumulus clouds were like giant puffs of silver smoke in the air, with their great, dark shadows drifting slowly across the lagoon, which still managed, somehow, to look turquoise at night. Sometimes when these clouds passed over the moon, and I stood in their shadows, it was such an abrupt change from light to dark that it felt like an eclipse. I looked up, and the moon was surrounded by a faint, shimmering, rainbow ring. On my meandering way I came upon a pair of ka‘upu dancing in the moonlight – and it was not their shapes themselves which transfixed me, but their dancing shadows. I felt greatly moved. The way the shadow-necks arched, the shadow-bills touched, and how, when they elegantly half-opened their wings and preened during the dance, the shadow looked like a dark flower opening. A moon-flower, one that only unfurled on nights like this. For probably the sixth time just this week, I asked myself: what was this magical place that I’d washed up in?
I’ll leave you on that note. See you next week, with more chick updates!
Aloha,
Isabelle Beaudoin