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View From Here - Hawaii Travel Blog - Birdwatching

Total Number of Entries - 73

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A Meditation on the Chickens of Kauai

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Sat 1/21/2012

Destination: Kauai

I have written extensively here on this blog about excursions in search of monitoring and counting and observing Hawaii’s native and, often, endangered species from Laysan albatross, black-footed albatross, short-tailed albatross and Newell’s shearwater. To Hawaiian monk seals, humpback whales, false killer whales. Green and hawk’s bill sea turtles. And hedyotis st. johnii. And yet, I have not once written about a species of great intrigue, especially to Kauai’s visitors. Perhaps because the species of which I allude is found in my backyard. Its numbers are rising unchecked. And it’s not included on any list except, perhaps, one of a nuisance to insomniacs. I refer, of course, to the chicken.
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Dark Night of the Shearwater

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Thu 10/27/2011

Destination: Kauai

But nights like tonight—the dark nights of the new moon—aren’t so great for the endangered Newell’s Shearwater on Kauai. Especially the fledglings. They fly for their first time around now, leaving their nests high in the mountains and using the reflection of the moon to guide them to the sea. On dark nights, when the moon is new, these fledglings mistake the bright lights of civilization for that of the moon. They circle around areas they shouldn’t be. Areas with electrical lines. Areas with complicated electrical arrays. Tall street lamps. Telephone poles. And exhaustion sets in. Collisions occur. Many birds, mostly chicks, fall from the sky.
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Jack's Best Bet for Birding on Hawaii Island

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 9/26/2011

Destination: Hawaii Island

Jack Jeffrey knows birds. He knows plants. He knows when plants will bloom and what birds will flock to those blossoms like my husband gravitates to chocolate. For 30 years, Jack has roamed the valleys, rainforests and mountains of Hawaii Island studying, observing and photographing Hawaii’s endemic forest birds as wildlife biologist, photographer and all-around birder. Here, he shares his favorite birding spots on Hawaii Island, as well as some exquisite images of Hawaii’s beautiful birds.
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Counting Crows

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Thu 9/22/2011

Destination: Hawaii Island

I’m standing on one side of a window in the library of the Keauhou Bird Conservation Center. On the other side of the glass, two crows, a couple, go about their day. The male presents the back of his head to the female. She reaches over, opens her bill and plucks out a feather. He flinches but presents his head to her again, and she reaches, opens and plucks. It’s molting season, a prickly, itchy time for a bird. A little help snagging those feathers in hard to reach places is greatly appreciated.
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A Weekend on Napali: Part Four

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Wed 9/14/2011

Destination: Kauai

Mike & Natalia caught a late afternoon boat ride back to Kīkīaola and civilization with Captain Andy’s Raft Expeditions, one of three boat tour operators permitted to land at Nu‘alolo Kai and take their passengers on a guided tour through the valley, and that left me with time on my hands to do some real work.
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Contemplating Kukui Trees and What to Pack

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 8/29/2011

Destination: Kauai

So, I am sitting here contemplating kukui trees. Mine are weeping. The kukui tree is the official state tree of Hawaii. It was sort of the like the Swiss Army Knife of trees back in old Hawaii. Hawaiians used its leaves, branches, trunks and seeds to make fires, canoes, medicines, fish bait, fish floats, dye, an adhesive, tattoos, cloth and oil for lamps. Today, the kukui is most well-known for its seeds that are strung into lei. You might know it as the candlenut tree. Its scientific name is Aleurites moluccana. What I like about the tree is it embodies my personal philosophy when it comes to landscaping my yard—native and care-free.
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Another Friday Afternoon at Kilauea Point

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Wed 8/24/2011

Destination: Kauai

It’s just another Friday afternoon at the refuge, and I am blogging from “Birdville,” a.k.a. Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge. The skies overhead are clearing, after a surprising squall provided a bit of cloud clover and respite from the hot sun. Not enough rain fell to clean the windshield, much less soak the soil outside the wedge-tailed shearwater burrows and leach its nourishing bird guano deep into the ground. Funny how Hawaii skies sneak up on you like that.
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Mark Twain's New Stamp

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Wed 6/29/2011

Mark Twain visited Hawaii in 1866 and fell in love. And yet these were his words on first sighting the Hawaiian Islands, which he insisted on calling “The Sandwich Islands,” after Captain James Cook. Oahu loomed high, rugged, treeless, barren, black and dreary, out of the sea, and in the distance Molokai lay like a homely sway-backed whale on the water.
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Fly Away Home Big Little Short-Tailed Albatross

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 6/20/2011

Destination: Kauai

On Saturday, I headed to the North Shore of Kauai to check on some Laysan Albatross chicks. There are a total of 11 that I monitor on behalf of several wildlife agencies. Already, their wings have filled out from their stubby hatchling days. Brownish-grey down has given way to clean and white contour feathers covering their bodies. Primary and secondary flight feathers on their wings and tails are in—and groomed regularly by these chicks.
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The Most Capable of Change

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Thu 6/2/2011

Destination: Maui, Kauai, Oahu

I am sitting in a chair in the air, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean between the Hawaiian Islands of Kauai and Oahu. I am headed to Maui for a short getaway, and I am writing this on a wireless keyboard using the Notes app on my iPhone4. While sitting at the Lihue Airport waiting to board Hawaiian flight #508, I received a phone call from my friend Pat, who lives on a sailboat at the Ala Wai Boat Harbor on Oahu. I checked my Facebook account to read about her cat’s morning swim in the harbor. I tweeted about the three birdwatchers sitting next to me, pouring over their bird books and plotting their birding adventures on Maui. (Hosmer Grove, I leaned over and whispered.)
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