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View From Here - Hawaii Travel Blog - Birdwatching

Total Number of Entries - 73

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Blog Action Day Hawaii Style

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Fri 10/16/2009

Next month, we expect about 100 pairs of Laysan albatrosses will return to Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge to breed, lay a single and care for their one chick until it fledges some time in July. Factor in three birds for each nest site (not all birds breed), and I don’t even need a calculator to sum up the fact that Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge doesn’t contribute much to the overall Laysan albatross population. Not compared to Midway. But that may change.

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Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Fri 10/2/2009

Destination: Kauai

Visit Kaua‘i’s National Wildlife Refuges during National Wildlife Refuge Week, October 11 - 17, and celebrate America’s wildlife heritage! Our National Wildlife Refuge System is made up of more than 550 refuges throughout the United States. From Alaska to Puerto Rico, from Maine to Guam, Refuges protect more than 95 million acres set aside to conserve habitat for birds and other wildlife.
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Hawaii's Migratory Birds

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 8/17/2009

Destination: Kauai

Wedge-tailed shearwaters are migratory. Just like the Pacific Golden Plover that arrived in my yard today from the Arctic—it will stay until April or May. Just like the Laysan albatross. Just like Lee Sass. You know Lee Sass. He served as my mentor at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, answering my myriad of questions about the seabirds--and, let me tell you, I can ask an annoying amount of questions. I recounted an incident on this blog last December about a mysterious bird perched on a rock on Moku’ae’ae Island, just north of Kilauea Point. Without looking, Lee predicted the seabird in question was a Great Frigatebird. Even with binoculars, the bird was difficult to identify. A crowd gathered. We debated. Lee stuck with his original guess; the rest of us decided the perched bird was a brown booby. Lee wasn’t convinced.
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Hawaii's Albatross Ready for Flight

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 6/22/2009

Destination: Kauai

Since these chicks pipped some four-and-a-half months ago, they witnessed double-overhead swells pounding the shore below their bluff, they survived heavy rains that bred mosquitoes and an avian pox that twisted the bills of their breathren, and they celebrated Valentine's Day, my birthday, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day and, now, the longest day of the year. But, as you can see, these two chicks are readying for their coming out party.
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Laysan Albatross Chick Preens for the Camera

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Wed 5/27/2009

Destination: Kauai

Our Laysan albatross chicks sit around waiting for mom and dad to fly in with dinner. The visit lasts all of a few minutes. So what do the chicks do the rest of the week? They preen, for one. And why not? Especially when these cool, new adult feathers appear. It’s like the teenager who spends hours looking at himself in the mirror grooming a few, straggly mustache hairs. It’s not like our chicks have much else to do. So, they tease out the down–you can see it encircling their nest cup–and wait for the feathers that will see them fledge in a little over a month now.
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Birds and Time Take Flight in Hawaii

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Wed 5/20/2009

Destination: Kauai

Time. It tends to slip away all too quickly. What with the invention of fax machines, the creation of FedEx and now the Internet, text messaging, Twitter and Facebook, we like to think our generation somehow cranked the handle of time too tightly and is now watching it unravel at an unprecedented rate. And, yet, how do we explain the aphorism “time flies,” perhaps first known in Latin as the expression tempus fugit? Was the Roman poet Virgil a poor manager of his own time? Or was he making a statement for all the people of his day, and, thereby, making the passage of time a human experience rather than a 21^st century one?
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Laysan Albatross Chick Stretches Its Wings

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 3/23/2009

Destination: Kauai

Let’s say you’re an albatross chick. Consider: You emerged into this world of greens and blues called Hawai’i in late January. That makes you almost two months old, which means you’re still a big ball of fluff. All down.
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Building a House in Hawaii

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 3/16/2009

Destination: Kauai

My husband and I recently built a home in Hawaii. Well, rather, he built it, and I shopped for the decorative items, such as new furniture, curtains, light fixtures and paint color. That’s not how it works in the bird world, specifically Red-footed boobies.
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Albatross Chicks Hatch Here in Hawaii

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Thu 2/26/2009

Destination: Kauai

The albatrosses started hatching earlier this month. The process of pecking at their calcium enclosure and emerging into this world is called “pipping.” To date, we have 89 nests and 48 chicks at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge.
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Hawaii Gets Digital TV Early. It’s for the Birds.

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 2/2/2009

Destination: Hawaii Island, Kauai, Maui, Oahu

The Hawaiian petrel (Pterodroma phaeopygia sandwichensis) numbers around 1,000 and nests, primarily, on the slopes of Haleakala on Maui. This bird, also called a dark-rumped petrel, starts its nesting season in February, and is the very reason why the state of Hawaii transitioned to digital TV one month earlier than the rest of the country. (No doubt, you’ve seen the ads on TV and received notifications from your cable service provider about this.)
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