Hana Hou” in Hawaiian means, “one more time,” or “encore.” It can be heard in the islands after a concert or any other performance – like the hula. It is also the name of Hawaiian Airlines in–flight magazine suggesting you visit Hawaii “one more time.” Hana Hou is my favorite in–flight magazine. Every issue contains an article on the islands’ natural history. Birds are frequent subjects and I suspect the editor, Michael Shapiro, is a birdwatcher. On our latest trip, there were articles on birds in both the January and February issues.
When I opened January’s magazine, Joan Conrow’s short piece immediately caught my eye. There was a photo of a person’s hand, palm-side up. Visualize your thumb laying so close to the index finger that it covers half of it. Cradled in that amount of space was a tiny, naked bird – a nestling. So tiny and so precious. The bird, an akepa, is one of Hawaii’s native honeycreepers. It’s part of a recovery program funded by the San Diego Zoo. It operates at the Big Island’s Keauhou Bird Conservation Center, or KBCC, near Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
KBCC is the world’s first facility to breed rainforest birds. The center developed its technique by experimenting on some of Hawaii’s common birds. If you are going to successfully breed and raise endangered birds with the goal of returning them to the wild, something else must be considered. They need to be returned to an environment where they can not only survive but successfully breed and raise their young.
Shapiro’s article in Hana Hou’s February issue addressed this. Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge on the Big Island was created specifically for the island’s native bird species. The refuge, 33,000 acres of forest on the eastern slope of Mauna Kea, needed a lot of restoration work. Large amounts of land were planted with native trees and plants, some of them rare and endangered. One of those involved in the project was Jack Jeffrey, senior wildlife biologist for the refuge.
One of the endangered plants was the native lobelia “oh wai,” a historical food favorite of the Hawaiian honeycreeper, the i’iwi. Jeffrey’s dream was to see and photograph the i’iwi feeding on this plant. Four-hundred of them had been planted on Hakalau. To survive in the long run, they needed to be bird-pollinated. The i’iwi’s decurved bill seems designed to fit into the lobelia’s curved blossom and accomplish this. Young birds must be taught how to do this and Jeffrey was told the process would be a hundred years in the making in order to be successful.
In July of 2008, while Jeffrey was leading a field trip for school children, the youngsters spotted an i’iwi feeding in the tubular blossoms of the endangered lobelia. Jeffrey’s photo on that occasion is his favorite and he has taken thousands of i’iwi photographs. Things are looking up for Hawaii’s endemic birds and I’m looking forward to more of such articles in Hana Hou magazine. If you want to read the complete story, go to www.hanahou.com.
Write to Joan Carson, PO Box 217, Poulsbo, WA 98370. Include a self–addressed, stamped envelope for a reply.
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