23 March (153 days on island)
The 5 of us have been here on this tiny atoll for 5 months now. 2 months left. It’s pretty awesome to have done this – such a small number of people on this earth know what it’s like to actually live and work in a remote field camp with so few people, amongst thousands of seabirds in the middle of nature. It makes my skillset quite a unique one, and I have learned, and continue to learn, an enormous amount whilst here. Not just about birds, islands, weather and plants – but also about people, relationships, teamwork, and leadership.
I start each week’s entry with a blank slate and no plan, simply allowing the writing to take me where it will, so here we go. We treated 51 acres this week. We still managed to cover quite a lot of ground whilst moving the HELFOE project along nicely. The end is now in sight in terms of cutting down the trees we girdled on the southern shoreline. This has been ongoing for many weeks now and is a painful task! HELFOE trees I believe have some malevolent intent as you cut them down – they always need to have the last word, and it is not uncommon for me to walk away from a morning’s 2-3 hour chopping session with big bruises, lumps, bumps, and scrapes from the branches. It is however quite enjoyable to look out at the reef from the southern shoreline as you work. I saw humpbacks in this way a few months ago, and the other day, Tlell and I saw a spotted eagle ray. It is also wonderful to look up and to see the ‘iwa (frigatebirds) and the albatross passing low over your head as they cruise up and down the island’s shoreline. They look right down at you and frequently make eye contact, mere feet away sometimes. It was great weather for most of this week, so I could also get the cement patching job done on the back of the main house, and others accomplished tasks such as putting a new valve into one of the bunkhouse water tanks, putting out more wasp traps, assessing where to begin planting native vegetation in the areas where HELFOE has been cut down, cutting some border trails between GRAs, etc. There is always a lot to do. This week also saw us go into certain GRAs where I do not think the number of deep, sandy burrows we crushed are justified by the number of weeds found, so I am hopeful that we will not be needing to transect those areas as thoroughly in future rotations.
Of note this week with respect to natural history: babies! Babies everywhere. The ewa’ewa (sooty terns) and grey-backs (pakalakala) haven’t laid yet, but the noio (black noddies), the manu-o-Ku (white terns), the koaʻeʻula (red-tailed tropicbirds), and the nunulu (Bonins) have the past months, which means there are babies below you, around you, above you, pretty much at all times except when you’re on the runway – then it’s just the albatross chicks around you. The ua‘u kani (wedge-tailed shearwaters) have begun to return in earnest now, and you can hear them moaning and wailing at each other from the bushes all night. They kick up veritable sand fountains when they are digging out their scrapes – I watched one for a few minutes whilst treating this week. It was impressive. The aoʻū (Christmases) are also kind of everywhere along the runway now, pairing up and beginning to sit on their little surface nests of leaves. I love watching these birds in flight – in the shade they look pure black, but when the slanting, bright morning sun catches their feathers, you can really see their wonderful dark-chocolate tones. Four of them flew in formation around us one day on the runway, calling in the air, and doing their characteristic flap-flap-flap-flap gliiiiiiiide and bank, flight. I saw several freshly-hatched manu-o-Ku (white tern) chicks in the trees, which we affectionately call ‘toasted marshmallows’. Thursday night was great for stargazing – there was little wind and no haze, so I sat up on the roof for nearly an hour after dark, in that rich, velvety light, listening to all the different bird voices around me, with the odd akihikeʻehiʻale (Tristram’s storm petrel) giggle making me smile.
The albatross chicks are on the move! They are really motoring now, with some having learned how to walk properly, not just resting back on their tarsus joints and hobbling along. This means some of them can now start to try and evade some of the adults’ throttling attacks, which is a relief, but some are also now running after the adults for food. Others are simply too fat to do so, and are quite sedentary. This is the case for many of the early ka’upu (black-footed albatross) chicks. I spent several hours yesterday simply sitting and observing the chicks. They preen, nest-build, trundle, fight with each other, beg, preen, nest-build, doze, stand, airplane stretch, sit, preen, stand and flap wings, turn around, explore a bit, return to bowl, wiggle-wiggle-back-up-poop, nest-build, preen, sit up, sit down – rinse and repeat. They have begun adopting several of the adult behaviours I have watched so many times now, which is sweet, but slightly odd – such as trying to lift up a brood pouch as though to sit on an egg. You’re not far off from an egg yourself little matey! And you haven’t even got a brood pouch!
I was affected deeply this week by the passing of a crossbill mōlī (Laysan albatross) chick we’d named Gabriel. His lower mandible curved down and sideways towards his neck. We learned from Cynthia that this deformity was due to heavy-metal contaminants. It was shaped in a way which would not have allowed him to get much food from his parents, and although we had seen him last month looking bright-eyed, we knew it couldn’t last. I don’t know how to describe my feelings about this accurately, so I’m resorting to copying out what I wrote in my journal that night: ‘I cried all the way back to camp today when we finished CP8. Gabriel was dead. I was overwhelmed with hopelessness then. At the harsh unfairness of it. Here we were, scratching away at the conservation of a tiny, fractured ecosystem where people had brought so much evil, both in terms of their actions and in terms of the invasives they had carried here, and in the enormous world around us, so much bad was happening. The heavy-metal contaminants which had hurt this albatross baby, which were just floating around, would not go away for years. The people who had put them into the ocean would never be held accountable. These deformed chicks never stood a chance, and they had to starve to death. Bless their little souls. What can I do against such reckless disregard? What can I do to help when so much bad has happened?’ It is still difficult for me to write about this incident. The next day, I saw that one of the other crossbill chicks I’d noticed several weeks ago was dead too. I’d known it would happen. But it hurt deeply all the same. That evening as the sun set, I said a few prayers for the chicks that didn’t make it, and cried. I find that I am never far from tears out here – sometimes tears of joy, but often tears of sadness. It only takes a small thing for them to come out, and then it’s hard to stop them once they’ve started. Emotions can run close to the surface. This is not just because this is my first time on Hōlanikū – instead, this is just how I am. I allow myself to feel very deeply about what I see in the natural world, and whilst this is painful at times, it also allows me to tell the story more powerfully, and I believe it also makes me a better biologist, sharpening my observational skills and my drive to take action on what I notice. Hopefully one day, my stories and photos will reach into the hearts of people who can make decisions that really change the outlook for these wonderful beings.
This week you’ll find attached to the blog, photos of two of the crossbill chicks I have encountered so far. They are not high-res or anything, and were simply taken out in the field. But I wanted to try to honour them. Gabriel and Michael, rest in peace. Gone, but I will never forget you, little bright-eyed fuzzies. You tried so hard, and did a great job in your short time here.
Aloha,
Isabelle Beaudoin