-: Aloha everybody and welcome to our third Thursday webinar
for this month.
We have a really great presentation for you today
about one of our most beloved visitors to Hawaiʻi,
the the Kōlea or the Pacific golden-plover,
and our awesome guest Susan Scott,
who's the president of Audubon Society.
Before we get started,
just a couple of housekeeping details.
If you are having problems with your audio,
please check the audio settings
in the go-to webinar control panel
that should be on your right as you join the webinar,
just make sure it's set to whatever audio you're using,
whether you're using headphones or speakers.
If you check that, that usually resolves any of the issues.
But if you still do have problems,
please type those in the question bar or the chat
and we'll do what we can to help you resolve that
so you can hear the presentation.
Also, if you do have any questions
during the webinar for Susan,
if we can get to them at the end,
type those in the question bar as well
and we'll also be posting some resources in the chat
for you to look at.
But before we get started, as is proper in Hawaiʻi,
we open with a protocol to open the space to learning
and to better understand what we're learning
and to embrace it.
And I'm going to turn it over to Malia Evans
for opening protocol.
Aloha mai kākou
Let's prepare ourselves for our protocol.
(chant in Hawaiian language)
Mahalo Malia
So it's wonderful to and the space
and to embrace new understandings and learning
and meet new friends.
So before, just wanna give you a little bit of background
about the your National Marine Sanctuary System.
So your system is part of 15 National Marine Sanctuaries
across the United States.
We have four proposed new national Marine sanctuaries,
including us out here in the Pacific
the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument,
and it embraces also two marine national monuments,
which of course is us,
as well as American Samoa
or the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument.
This is your National Marine Sanctuary system
and it goes from coast to coast
and includes incredible sights also in the Great Lakes
such as Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary,
and Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast,
and the new one potentially
Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary.
Those sites particularly protect
some underwater maritime heritage.
And also we have a new heritage,
potential heritage site on the West coast
in Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary
that's being proposed.
So this is your National Marine Sanctuary system,
our underwater parks.
So if you are near any these sites,
please go visit them and enjoy these spectacular places.
But we work for Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
So we're the largest,
the world's largest fully protected area,
having 582,578 square miles of ocean area,
encompassing only six square miles of land
within that vast area.
But we are being proposed
as a National Marine Sanctuary site,
but also co-managed with the area's co-managed
with the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
the Office of Hawaiian Affairs,
and the State of Hawaiʻi.
And if we were overlaid this area
or the whole Hawaiian Archipelago over the United States
who would stretch from about New Orleans to Las Vegas.
So it's a vast area about what's that,
about a quarter the size of the whole United States.
And our host today for your webinar are myself,
Andy Collins, an Education Coordinator for Papahānaumokuākea
and Malia Evans, who's on O'ahu
and our Education and Outreach person on O'ahu.
But I work over here in Hilo
at our Mokupāpapa Discovery Center.
And if you are in Hilo,
please make some time to come visit us.
We are open Tuesday through Saturday, nine to four.
We're the only interpretive center for Papahānaumokuākea
for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
We have beautiful exhibits in English and Hawaiian language,
a beautiful 3,500 gallons, but water, aquarium,
many other exhibits throughout an incredibly beautiful
and historic building on the Hilo Bay front for three.
So we hope you can come and see us
and learn more about this amazing place.
But sanctuary across the system
are there to protect the incredible biodiversity
of these areas.
They provide shelter for threatened and endangered species
such as this Hawaiian monk seal and green sea turtle,
enjoying a moment on the beach at French Frigate Shoals.
Also for the cultural heritage in Papahānaumokuākea
we have some amazing cultural sites
from back when Hawaiians were living on these islands,
even to today when these islands are being used
as a navigational training ground, and also,
or cultural heritage of those spaces.
We also protect maritime heritage,
we have more recent maritime travels, such as deep sea ship,
such as shipwrecks in the Great Lakes
and in Papahānaumokuākea
and conduct research on the wildlife
and the habitats within these places.
And so we can monitor them over time
for things like impacts like climate change
and other coastal impacts to these areas.
And broader ocean impacts such as marine debris.
In some cases, we're able to do marine resource protection
and conservation.
There's a fantastic program in the Florida Keys
where they're trying to out-plant corals
on a number of different sites
and restore some of those sites in the Florida Keys.
We also do a lot of education such as this program
to try to inspire the next generation
to connect with our oceans and to help protect them.
And we do outreach events where we go out into the community
and we're only able to do this with our volunteers.
So if you are interested in volunteering,
please connect with your local sanctuary site
and see how you can help.
There's everything to do from beach cleanups
to working in discovery centers
to a whole range of opportunities for volunteering
to help protect these special places.
And again, they are, they're amazing places.
These are places where we can reconnect with our spirit
to understand our connection to nature, to recreate,
to fish, to do other things.
So if you are in or near these areas,
please reconnect with these places.
And Susan, you can turn on your webcam
and your microphone right now and I will introduce you.
So our presenter today is Susan Scott.
She's the President of the Hawaiʻi Audubon Society,
but she also wrote a weekly column called Ocean Watch
for the Honolulu Star Advertiser from '87 to 2020
and is the author of 10 books about nature in Hawaiʻi.
Two recent books about the Kōlea Pacific golden-plover
and the Manu-o-Kū, White Tern.
In 2020, she helped revise the seventh edition
of the Hawaiʻi Audubon Society's book "Hawaiʻi Birds"
Her interest in Native birds
resulted in the Audubon Society Board directors
electing her president in January 2022.
She's a former registered nurse,
earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Hawaiʻi,
and is a graduate of the university's Marine Option Program
Go (indistinct).
Where she studied marine journalism
and as a volunteer with US Fish and Wildlife Service,
she has counted albatross at Midway tagged crabs on Palmyra
rescued monk seals and sea turtles,
at French Frigate Shoals.
And her newspaper column
unfortunately was discontinued due to the pandemic.
But through her work with Audubon Society,
she continues sharing her enthusiasm
for Hawaii's remarkable Native species.
So I'm going to turn presenter over to you, Susan,
and we'll make sure everything is working good here.
Is your audio on?
-: Yes, I'm good.
Can you hear me?
Andy: Yes, so you should have presenter now.
-: Okay.
Ready to go?
Andy: Yeah, I don't see your screen just yet.
Okay, now it's coming up.
-: Good.
Andy: There we go, you're good to go.
I'm gonna go mute, mute myself.
-: Can I turn off Andy, can I turn off?
Andy: Yes.
-: The, I can't see my own screen very well.
Oh, I see.
I can make myself smaller.
Andy: Yeah, there you go.
-: But I don't wanna turn myself off.
-: (laughing) No.
-: Yeah, yeah okay.
And I can make, okay.
All right, well, thank you for joining me in my,
the Hawaiʻi Audubon Society's program,
Citizen Science Program to monitor our
and appreciate our Kōlea birds we already know and love.
And one of the things that we talked about when we,
before we started this program was almost all,
any of us here about Hawaiiʻs birds, it's bad news.
They're extinct.
There's a whole book about the extinct birds of Hawaiʻi
that Michael Walter wrote and just did a new addition in 22.
There's headlines, they're all about extinction,
and there's even a children's book about extinct birds.
And so one of the things we really wanted to point out
and to just celebrate is that some of the birds,
our Native birds are doing really well.
And so we wanted to celebrate those birds
and the three species
that we chose out of Pacific golden-plover
and the Manu-o-Kū, white tern
and the ʻUa'u kani wedge-tailed shearwaters.
And so those three programs in the Hawaiʻi Audubon
all have citizen science projects that you can find out
lots about on our Hawaiʻi Audubon website under what we do.
But the one thing I'm gonna talk about this time
is the, guess which one.
You could tell which one this is
by the golden colors in the feather,
and that is the Pacific golden-plover.
Oops.
The Kōlea in Hawaiian.
And so as a writer I like to not use a lot of adjectives,
but when you're talking about our Kōlea,
we always say they're gorgeous, they're friendly,
they have all of these great attributes
that most of us love, and that is our Pacific golden-plover,
Native shorebirds here.
So the ancient Hawaiians also revered the plover.
There was the Kōleamoku
they called the Plover god of art of Healing.
And this was a painting done by a Russian a painter
on a Russian ship in 1816.
And there's a Kōlea on top of the statue.
This is in Kailua-Kona.
And when it was restored in the 1970s,
people who restored it also put the Kōleamoku
on top of the statue.
It's very same.
And they keep it this,
I just took this picture a couple months ago.
So it's the Kōleamoku is still there, the patron of Kahuna.
The ancient Hawaiians also ate Kōlea,
of course, you'd eat anything you could catch.
And they caught the Kōlea with these stones
called Kōlea stones.
And wrap a piece of line around there,
put a grub and a fish hook on the end
or a hook and then that would catch the birds.
So as late as 1883,
they were still menus on the ʻIolani Palace menus.
They were meals.
So the entrees were plover and breakfast.
Their breakfast was plovers on toast.
People shot plovers up until 1939
and they had a limit of 15 a day.
But Wally Johnson, who studied them all of his life,
tells me that the numbers went well over 15 a day.
And when the numbers started really decreasing,
people became alarmed
and made a ban on hunting Kōlea in 1939.
And then in 1941, we all know what happened in Hawaiʻi.
This is Waikīkī,
and the hunting ban became permanent for Kōlea after that.
Malia: All right, so we have our first poll.
So let's see who is paying attention.
Let us bring up that poll.
So the question is,
Kōlea, were once on menus at ʻIolani Palace
revered by ancient Hawaiians as a god of healing,
shot as game birds or all of the above?
So go ahead and register your vote.
And I see about half of you have voted.
And we'll close out the poll in three, two, and one.
And let's get you those results, Susan.
All right, well here are some interesting numbers.
We, 96% of our attendees think all of the above.
2% shot as game birds.
1% of them said revered by ancient Hawaiians
and 2% said on menus at ʻIolani Palace.
So 96%, all of the above.
How'd they do Susan?
-: Great, that's A plus.
Thank you.
Okay, we call these migratory shorebirds
even though we don't often see them on the shore.
I did see a couple on at Mokulēʻia Beach Park on the shore,
but they also eat fish,
which is a very rare picture
that was sent by a friend Robert Weber.
And Wally was very excited about this picture
because we don't usually see them fishing and eating fish.
This was in on Maui.
But mostly the great thing about these birds
is they have learned to live not only with us humans,
but with the changes that we've made in their environment.
And that's one of the reasons
that they think they're doing quite well.
So they have, they like our golf courses,
they like our miniature golf courses
'cause it's covered with the AstroTurf and the insects
and other bugs that they eat can't escape.
So we've seen them there.
This, the one on the right was swimming in a pool of a hotel
I stayed at in Kauaʻi recently.
And the other one that this funny story about the car
is that the bird thought there was another bird
in this rental car that the owner's brother rented a car
and parked it in the middle of the Kōlea's territory
on the yard.
And he kept pecking at the car
trying to get to scare away the other bird.
So people feed them,
they call them and they come when they call.
They've really learned to adjust to living with humans.
This is just a picture of one that a friend sent me
in the middle of a very busy intersection
on the Pali Highway and Kamehameha Highway
that's pretty much there all the time.
And here's a video that the guy who's brother rented the car
sent me is very funny.
This bird trying to chase away the bird in its reflection.
You can see his reflection in the car
and then he can't quite make it.
So he ran around the other side of the car
to see if the bird was over there.
But he entertained the family for quite some time.
So the Plovers have really adjusted
to our environmental changes.
Of course the islands don't look anything
like what they used to have before humans are here.
And the one great thing about them,
and the reason we can count them
is because they're very territorial.
So even in our parks,
in our yards and all commotion that's going on,
if we startle them like this lawnmower in Kailua Beach Park,
they come back to the same place.
Here's one that's at in Kāne'ohe that was a rare white one.
And you could see that it was not bothered by people
or even a dog lying there.
Lots of traffic there.
I named this bird Blanche.
The other thing is they have really adapted well
to all of the introduced insects
and pests that we have introduced to Hawaiʻi,
including centipedes, cockroaches,
anything that crawls
and earthworms are not native to Hawaiʻi.
But the birds love them
and they hunt for anything they can find.
And I just wanna mention too, that a lot of these photos,
gorgeous photos are sent to me by Kōlea fans
and photographers and people who take nice pictures
and allowing me to share them.
So thank you for that.
They like to sleep on flat rooftops or slanted rooftops too.
The people ask me often where they go at night
and they usually sleep up on rooftops and flat places
to get away from predators.
They're very predator alert.
So they do fairly well and sleep up high.
And the one with all of the birds at the bottom is UH Hilo.
Someone sent me this last year.
Is also in Hilo,
it's an elementary school whose mascot is the Kōlea.
And so I was just there recently
and we took a nice picture this spring
of the students and teachers welcoming back their bird.
Malia: All right, we have our next poll ready to go.
So the questionnaire is,
what is a common English name of the Kōlea?
And your choices are the Yellow-spotted curlew,
Tawny Turnstone, Pacific golden-plover
or the Wandering wimbrel.
So go ahead and whoa, you guys are quick.
We have like 75% of you who have voted
and I'm gonna shut down the poll in three, two, and one.
And let's see how you all did.
All right Susan.
So once again we have an overwhelming vote for 98%
of our attendees think it's a Pacific golden-plover.
Are they correct?
-: Yes, that's right.
And Wally tells me you can say Plover or Plover.
Both are correct either way.
Hello?
Malia: You're good to go Susan.
-: Good to go.
Okay, alright.
So the other thing is we also have,
besides the Plovers learning to live with us,
we have learned here in Hawaiʻi to really live with them
and to really like them.
I went to the bank and my banker had these pictures
and I said, what are these pictures that you (indistinct)
"Oh, that's, I just like the birds so much
"and this is near where I live.
"So I made a little poster for my desk
"so I can see the birds while I work."
Another, this is a mosaic that's made a big one
that's several feet tall and wide
in front of a church in Kailua,
that's an artist made and put up in front of a church.
And a woman sent me a copy of a painting that she had made
of the Pacific golden-plover.
And this is Becky
who lives in the front yard of one of my neighbors.
And Suzanne makes sure
that she always has water in the dishes
so Becky can have a drink of water.
So the thing is we all have really learned,
they've learned to love us
and we've learned to love them back,
which is really unusual for native birds
'cause we usually think of them as being shy
and it's hard to approach some birds but not these.
So as I said, they're territorial and they're site faithful,
which means they go back to the same place year after year.
If they survived one winter in a place,
they'll come back to that winter and defend it.
These are two birds fighting over a space in Punchbowl
where we are doing some studies.
And so it was really interesting to see if another bird gets
in one another one's space, it will fight it for its space
and it'll fight other species too.
So they look different in the winter.
All the males and females look alike in the winter
and in the spring they start molting their winter feathers
and growing in their spring breeding feathers
and the males put on their tuxedos
and the females all have speckled breasts.
That's how you can tell the difference.
You can only tell the difference starting about now
they're starting to change in March and in April.
And if they have a speckled breast,
it's a female and if they're solid like that, it's male.
So they come one person wrote me and said,
"I had a bird in my yard all winter,
"but now I have a different one.
"Do you think the second one chased away the first?"
But I think it was probably the same bird
'cause they really look different.
So it could have been this bird in the winter at the top,
either skinny or fat, depending on when you see them.
And then the male and females look really different.
And there's a picture together.
So you can tell the difference.
In 1979, Wally Johnson started the Plover project
because we really, really
did needed to get some information.
So that's one of the things we're doing now
is putting little satellite tracking tabs
on the bird's backs, those little backpacks
and finding out some, getting some information.
So Wally is in charge of that.
He has been studying these birds for 60,
70 years and is still going strong.
He's arriving next week for some more work
and he has done a lot of work on this.
So the dark blue here is the range of the wintertime
space that the Plovers go to.
And in the summer, in the spring, excuse me,
and early summer they go to the Arctic.
And so there's a couple populations of Plovers.
We have our own here in Hawaiʻi
and we ours go from Hawaiʻi to Alaska nonstop
3000 miles in three days both ways.
They leave in April and come back in August
and the another population is at
flies to the South Pacific nonstop.
But on the way back they stop in Japan to refuel.
They eat bugs and insects in the Japanese rice fields
and then they go on to Alaska.
So it's interesting
they can make it all the way down south in the spring,
but when they go in the fall,
but when they go back to Alaska, they have to stop.
Kōlea by the way means one who takes and leaves.
So the Hawaiians knew that they would come fatten up
and then leave.
And this is a map of one of Wally's mini studies
of the Hawaiian Island birds.
So you can see late April,
the yellow ones go in late August they come back.
The oldest bird that Wally has ever banded was 21 years
and some months we don't know exactly
because you don't know how old they are
when they're banded.
But this banded bird we've named Mr. X
'cause he's in the X section of Punchbowl cemetery.
And he was banded 20 years, 10 months ago.
And if he makes one more round trip
Wally says he will make the record for the all time
oldest bird Plover that we know of.
And so if you have a bird in your yard,
you may have a friend for a really long time.
The departure dates are end of April, beginning of May.
This was gathering each year at Ford Island
that a reader sent me.
And so even though we know something about the Plovers,
there's still a lot of things we don't know.
And so one of my ideas for Hawaiʻi Audubon Society
was to sponsor a study where people see these birds,
we know them, they're in our yards, they're all over.
We say if you record some of this information
that you have anyway because we're out walking
and seeing these birds, maybe we'll get some data
that we can actually know more about the birds.
So one question is when they come and go,
let's see yeah, do they,
when do they arrive and when do they leave?
Is it the same day or does it vary?
So here's another.
Malia: All right, so here's our third poll for you folks.
And the question is,
Hawaiʻi Kōlea fly 3000 miles nonstop to Alaska,
rest on the ocean surface during migration.
Are excellent swimmers leave Hawaiʻi for Alaska in June.
So go ahead and register your vote friends.
And I am gonna close out the poll in three, two and one.
And here are your results Susan.
So 87% said fly 3000 miles nonstop to Alaska.
9% said leave Hawaiʻi for Alaska
and 4% said rest on the ocean during migration.
So what is the correct answer?
-: The correct answer is
they fly 3000 miles nonstop to Alaska.
They do not rest on the ocean ever because they cannot swim.
So if they get onto the ocean,
they would die and they don't leave for Alaska in June.
Those are the ones that spend the summer here.
They leave in April and May.
If they're here in June,
they're here for the summer.
Okay, so the other thing is the number of,
we don't know if the number of Kōlea
is increasing or decreasing.
And people have asked me about that
and I say that's one of the reasons we're doing this,
this study is to try to find that answer
'cause we don't know if the number is stable.
And the also we wanna know how many spend the winters here.
That's the same thing.
And the thing in June that I just said,
if you see one in June,
that means the bird didn't migrate to Alaska
because it's too thin
or it's something was wrong with it may have been injured.
But the interesting thing is
we don't know how many do not migrate.
So if you see them in June, please let us know.
That's part of the Kōlea Count.
This study by the way goes year round.
It's a 12 months year.
Andy: Hey Susan, I think we're not seeing your screen.
Do we close out the poll?
Make sure we close out the poll
and so we can see your screen again.
For some reason it stopped sharing.
Malia: Yeah, the poll is closed out.
There we go.
-: Is it back?
Andy: Yep, you're back.
-: Here we are.
Okay, we're good.
So that's increasing, decreasing the Kōlea.
How many spent summers?
I'll just say this goes year round
and so you think we would know some of these things
but the last statewide count was in 1949,
which doesn't really count.
And the interesting thing is even in 49,
even though the birds were not being hunted legally anymore,
they were still calling them states,
still called them game birds.
Wally counted the golf courses in, let's see, in 1992.
But the range was such a wide range for the golf courses
between two birds and 68 birds.
That itʻs really hard to make any averages.
So that's kind of a problem.
We actually have to get out on the golf courses
and today there were 37, today there's 82 golf courses.
So that's quite a bit of counting.
And the golfers have not been really very cooperative
in helping us do this.
In 1968, the state estimated or counted however they did it,
I don't know, nine, 5,000, over 5,000 Kōlea.
But they still call them game birds even in 1968.
So it takes a long time to make a change
in how we think about these birds
'cause they certainly we're not game birds
for over 30, 40 years by then.
People have said to me
why don't you go count them in Alaska?
And Wally has done some tagging studies and the red dots
are where the Hawaiʻi birds nest in the summer.
And the blue ones are where the other Pacific population,
Asia population nest.
And so the problem of counting them in Alaska
is this, what is what it looks like there.
I went there with Wally and it's really enormous,
enormous distances to try to even find one bird.
So it's not really possible to count birds in Alaska,
especially if you're looking for leg bands
or little backpacks.
And so we had eight satellite tags on Tahiti birds
and that's why I went with Wally to help them find them.
And so you have to find them with binoculars
then walk through
when you do see one walk through this tundra,
which is very difficult.
Can you see the bird there?
There it is.
So six of us worked for a whole week
and we only recovered four of eight tags
and we even kind of knew where the birds were.
So just say it's very difficult.
It's beautiful but very, very much widespread area
that they nest in.
And the great thing is the chicks are,
when you do find a nest,
you have to be really careful not to step on the eggs.
You can see on the left
how wonderfully camouflaged they are.
The male builds an nest and female lays the eggs
and they really match the tundra, the four chicks,
it's always four eggs and the four chicks
hatch very pretty close together.
Parents keep 'em warm till they're all hatched.
And interestingly the chick's hatched with legs, adult size.
So these are the size of the legs of an adult Kōlea
when it's first hatched.
So that's why Wally can put on the leg bands on a chick.
So they have these really amazingly hilarious huge feet
and legs.
People tell me they've seen chicks in Hawaiʻi
with a Kōlea chicks and it's common and easy mistake.
But these are Ruddy turnstones,
it's a different kind of shorebird and they tend to...
Usually there's one Kōlea
with a little flock of Ruddy turnstones.
And so someone sent me this great picture
of the Kōlea standing with the Ruddy turnstones.
So you'll never see chicks.
You do see young Plovers in Hawaiʻi,
it they are, they'll look like the adults
'cause they've had just had to fly 3000 miles.
So they're adult size with adult feathers.
Good question for me to setting this up with Wally was do
will people help us collect this data
if we start this site?
And the happy answer is yes.
So people were very enthusiastic,
like everyone has a story and charming and warm stories
about their Kōlea.
So we made t-shirts for people
to help us support the count and also we had clickers
that we can give you if you wanna count big areas.
And we made launch this website in February, 2020
and we all know what happened in March of 2020.
So we had a little slow start.
I wasn't able to get out
and publicize it as much as I want to, but now I am.
So I get to do it now.
So we started, this is the website.
If you just go to Kōlea Count, this will come up
and there's report tabs, there's guidelines,
there's history, there's the news tab.
Just tell you if you subscribe
you'll just get a notice from the website
that I have posted another story about Kōlea.
So you'll know when there's news,
but you can read up on the old ones they're there too.
We made little counts and big counts.
A little counts are for the one or two birds in your yard
or a bird you see on a street corner
that you just wanna tell us a little about
and record when it arrived and maybe when it left,
which will help us with some data.
And then the big counts are parks, resorts, cemeteries,
the military bases and ranches.
And so people have been sending me pictures of their ranch.
This was from the Big Island right after we started.
So the nice thing is you can do a little count
or a big count and record when you see the guidelines,
you'll see what we want to ask you to do.
It's fairly easy to count.
You aren't really getting,
usually counting two birds the same time
but occasionally you might,
but on the other hand you might be missing some.
So we think kind of evens out.
It's not obviously a really precise count.
We only got seven people to count golf courses.
So 73 golf courses when counted
to an enormous number of birds.
So that's one of my goals
is to try to get more of the golf courses counted.
They love the golf courses.
And so this is what we do on Christmas each year.
I live near mid Pacific Golf course on O'ahu
and we just go out, my niece and her husband Greg and I
go on Christmas and New Year's
when the golf courses are closed and count.
So that's an idea if you do live near a golf course
and they don't want you walking on it when it's open
you can maybe help us when it's closed.
It's a nice walking and fun to do.
So the first year we got 1500 people reporting birds
and these are the numbers and you can see O'ahu
we had the most, but mostly that's probably because
I was able to get around O'ahu much easier
to tell people what's happening
and now we're spreading the word a little bit.
Also spreading the word with children and their parents.
And this little girl was so excited to show me
that she knew what Kōlea was in the "Hawaiʻi Bird Book"
and we're beginning to go to preschools
and the kids are fantastic to teach.
And we have an artist
who is working with Hawaiʻi Audubon Society
who's going to with us to little older students.
These are first graders in Waipahu and she's helping us,
helping the kids and me too learn how to draw birds.
Here's another little quiz.
Malia: All right, so here we have our last poll.
So the question is Kōlea are they vegetarians,
eat only worms, raise chickens in Hawaiʻi,
can live to be 20 years old?
So go ahead and vote and I see about 50% of you have voted.
You guys are really quick and on it
and I'm gonna close down the poll in three, two, one
and let's get you those results.
Well Susan, we've got a really Akamai bunch here.
So 97% can live to be 20 years old.
How did our audience do?
-: Great, that's great.
Yeah, they can live at least 20,
well maybe more and they never raise chicks in Hawaiʻi
and they eat anything that crawls and of course worms,
the bugs and worms and things they eat are not vegetables.
So they eat animals,
they also eat berries sometimes if they can find them.
So thank you.
Okay, ready to go.
So this is just a picture of that one of the students drew,
I thought I'd share it with you
'cause it's particularly cute,
she said the pattern looks like broken hearts,
which is very touching.
They eat crawly things and long legs.
And so one of the points of doing this
is to teach children and the rest of us what to look for
when you're looking at a bird.
So do you want to Just say, I saw a brown bird
or have the kids actually identify the colors
and the patterns.
And that would do the same with fish,
which I've also studied.
And someone will say, oh I saw a fish with stripes.
Well that doesn't really do much good
if you wanna identify it.
So that's the point of this thing,
not to see how good an artist the kids are.
And kids really great about telling them that.
We also go to high schools,
which doesn't seem like the kids are paying attention.
You can see here they're reading,
some of 'em are reading their phones.
But we really have some great teachers who are really,
we're really trying to help.
And I do know that the,
a lot of the students really are paying attention.
We take them then outside and look for Kōlea,
which is a fun part of the classes.
We've also gone to senior citizen centers
and had really, really had a good time there.
Most of the seniors in Hawaiʻi know about the Kōlea
and when they were living at home
and had yards of their own, they had them there.
And this is in a Hawaiʻi Kai
and we found several outside here too.
So this is the Kōlea Count website, the homepage,
and you can get almost everything you need on the homepage
is scroll down and there'll be the guidelines
and there'll be the link.
There it is.
This is the bitly link that goes to this place.
And if you, wherever you live,
if you would like to count at a place,
you press one of the areas and this will come up.
You cannot put the X's on there.
You have to contact me to sign up.
We had in the beginning that you could sign up yourself,
but that didn't work out very well.
There was some hackers
and some other things that were happening.
So just email me.
I will put the X on it's read only
and then I'll sign up your name so I can contact you
if we wanna have a conversation.
And here's the contact page and that goes directly to me
and I will sign you up.
I just wanna say a word about bird rescues.
People call me fairly often about birds with broken legs.
You cannot catch a bird, a Kōlea with two good wings.
So if it's got a broken leg, it may or may not survive,
it might, it can do okay if it can stay away from predators,
but if it's got two good wings, we, you cannot catch it.
We really tried,
we've tried all kinds of ways and they just fly away.
So if it's got a broken leg, we just hope for the best.
And if it has a injured wing, which would this one did,
someone called me and we went and collected it
and took it to the veterinary hospital Feather and Fur
here in Kailua.
And they evaluate it to see if it needs rehabilitation
and what its survival chances are
so you can catch it if it's got a broken wing
and as you can see they'll not bite and they do not scratch.
So it's really easy and safe to pick them up.
I just wanna also mention that Blanche our white bird
that we, Kōlea that we saw at he appeared,
got eaten by cats.
So there were 35 cats around my car when I was there.
There's no question that bird got eaten.
And I just wanna say that Hawaiʻi Audubon Society
is asking you, please, please
don't let your pet cat out to roam free.
And if you do wanna take it out, put it on a leash.
Two of my neighbors have leashed cats and they do just fine.
So cats are a big problem for all of our birds,
Native and non-native.
So this is our little keep cats safe indoors.
And even if they're neutered,
which these are at Heʻia
'cause their ears are notched,
you can't see that very well.
They are, they still eat birds.
It's their nature, it's what they do.
They're predators
and keep dogs also are thing keep 'em on a leash.
So this is the end of my talk.
Every Kōlea counts, even we don't know,
this is only our second year of the study.
So even if we get some data,
we're gonna wait until we have years
of some years of data to see if the numbers are increasing
or decreasing in the lot big counts.
So please keep going year after year.
And even if you don't know if you're doing it correctly,
I get people saying, I don't know if I'm doing it right.
I don't know how to do this, I don't know much about birds.
We're still appreciating the birds, we're noticing them,
we're sharing this with other people.
We're getting one of our really adaptable Native birds
some attention that it deserves.
So this is the thing, the count, the big count starter,
little end, big count starts December 1st of March 31st.
That's the wintertime after the chicks are here,
but before they've started flocking together.
So you still have a little time to the end of this month,
but even after that you still,
you can notice it when they leave,
when they're here all summer
and when they come back in August.
So just keeps going.
And that tell you once you start this
and get involved with this,
there's nothing better in the world
than getting up close and personal.
We have a couple places for some volunteers
to help with some work that Wally is doing at Punchbowl.
And really everybody, who ever holds a Kōlea
or watches a Kōlea is smiling.
All these people are smiling.
This is the Hawaiʻi Audubon website
and you can see up under what we do,
you can see all all of the website will come up for there
and see other things that we're doing with tours
and schools and talks.
Just contact us, contact me through Kōlea
or contact us through this website.
Wally and I co-authored a book if you,
this is everything we know about the Kōlea so far
and so if you wanna help support the program,
you can buy this book on the Hawaiʻi Audubon's website
and also "Hawaiiʻs Birds"
which is Hawaiʻi Audubon Society's the only one of 450
Audubon Societies in the country
that has its own bird book.
So this also helps support the Audubon Society
and our citizen science projects.
So that's all I have to share with you.
I have a lot more, but that's all for this time.
And I just wanna say how great this has been for me.
I used to write about marine species
and that included seabirds and also the Kōlea shorebirds
'cause people ask me a lot about 'em and that is me
with the midnight sun in Alaska
behind me in the eye of a Kōlea.
It's one of my favorite all-time pictures.
You have questions please?
-: That is really cool.
Yeah, wow Susan for awesome talk.
We do have some nice questions for you
and thanks for leaving time for that.
I'll go through a few of them.
One person asked.
Isn't avian malaria a problem in Hawaiʻi?
It seems like making sure there's water and dishes available
for the birds attracts mosquitoes
and exacerbates the problem?
-: Some birds are resistant to avian malaria and I'm not,
I can't say for sure,
but I don't think that avian malaria affects our Plovers
because they have flown to other parts of the world
where mosquitoes are abundant.
And so I know that the birds on the mainland
and birds that have evolved with mosquitoes
have become resistant to avian malaria.
And one of the reasons Hawaiiʻs birds get avian malaria
and die from it is
'cause they have not been exposed to it in the past
when they evolved.
So I have never heard of any of the Kōlea
getting avian malaria.
They may get the bird flu.
We don't know that yet.
That's another thing.
-: Yeah, that makes sense.
-: Yeah, I'll ask Wally when he gets here,
if he's heard of any avian malaria among Kōlea,
but I have not heard of it.
-: Okay, yeah, he's on the presentation
so if he wants to type anything into the question box.
-: That's great.
-: Let's see.
So one person wants to know, is there any,
how often there are territorial turnovers
or displacement of a resident by like a new Kōlea
they're so territorial.
-: Well we don't know that.
I don't think that's known.
If a bird is there all season
and then it disappears in the middle of the season
before migration, it probably died.
And I don't know,
I've had people ask me how do I attract a Kōlea into my yard
'cause I had one and now I don't.
But you don't attract them.
They decide it themselves where they wanna go.
They pick, find a place that they can survive
where there's enough food insects and spiders and worms
and cockroaches and if they live through the winter,
that'll be their space.
But if they don't make it,
I have one right now that I've been watching all winter
that has not shown up for the last few weeks.
So I'm thinking it was probably died.
I think the average lifespan, they can live to 20,
but the average lifespans much, much lower.
They live a hard life without migration.
I think the average lifespans six, eight years.
-: How do they navigate from Hawaiʻi to Alaska
and even Japan for the other population?
-: Yeah, another great question.
We don't know.
It's unknown how you know how all these shorebirds
are just amazing navigators and long distance flyers
but they, it may be some magnetic component in their heads
that they know which way they're going
or where they're going.
But the amazing thing too,
and we don't know how they manage
is that the chicks that fly that fledge from Alaska,
the parents leave first and leave the chicks alone
to make their own way to Hawaiʻi.
-: Wow.
-: So they just have to find Hawaiʻi themselves or not.
And so we don't know how many perish but it's probably a lot
is it 'cause the population in Hawaiʻi
is not rapidly increasing.
So, but that's another thing
that hopefully we'll get some data
and it finds some of these things out.
-: It must be the smell of laulau
wafting in the breeze.
You know, they smell the Hawaiian foods.
-: Yeah, well you wonder.
-: Let's see how...
The question do the birds sometimes stay in Hawaiʻi
and not migrate?
I think you covered this a little bit.
Any other information on that?
-: Yeah, some of the birds, when we see birds here in June,
we figure that pretty much figure they did not leave
because they leave in the end of April
early May at the latest
'cause otherwise they won't have time
through the breeding season to lay eggs and raise chicks.
So they're here in June,
they're pretty sure they did not leave
and the first ones from failed nests
or nests where they either didn't,
the eggs didn't hatch or predators got the eggs,
they start coming back in July.
So pretty much the ones in June that we see
are the ones that did not migrate.
And we'd love you to tell us
if you see some in June and where they are.
So we don't know how many.
-: Okay.
How long did the chicks take to get strong enough to fly?
-: I think the chicks,
I believe the chicks is why we wrote a book
'cause I can't remember all the facts.
I believe the chicks fly in a month.
-: Oh, wow.
-: From when they hatch for about a month they can fly.
They stay in Alaska.
Yeah, they grow fast because it's light out 24 hours a day
in June when they're growing up
and the insects are so thick that they,
and the mosquitoes and other insects
that they get up your nose and they're really dense.
It's 'cause that's a hatching time also for insects.
So they eat 24 hours a day,
seven days a week and they grow very fast
but they stay the longest.
So the parents, the females leave in August 1st,
then the males leave,
the males sort of babysit for a little while,
then the males leave and then the chicks stay as long
as there's still food before the snow comes.
And so when the insects are really there,
that's when the chicks leave.
-: Okay, we'll do two more questions
and then there are other questions,
but we'll be sending these over to Susan
and then get the responses
and send those back out to the whole group.
But we'll just, we have time for two more here.
-: Well good 'cause I'll share them with Wally
when he gets here.
-: He's on, oh, when he gets to Hawaiʻi?
-: Yeah.
-: Let's see how high do they fly
and do they catch the jet stream to Alaska?
-: Well that's an interesting question
'cause that came up when I was there with you Andy.
And the highest that they fly is 16,000 feet,
which is amazing.
But they're normally don't fly that high.
I don't remember the average,
I don't know if we even know an average,
but they can really fly very high
and I think if they get favorable winds,
their average speed is about 40 miles an hour,
but they get bursts up to 100 miles an hour
and so in bursts.
But it seems like their little feathers
would just go flying off at 100 miles an hour.
But if they have very favorable winds,
they could get going that fast.
But otherwise they average about 40
and fly lo lower than 60, maybe 13,000 feet.
But it's amazing if, I have not seen this happen, Wally has,
but he's told me when you see them leave Hawaiʻi in April,
the end of April and they just get in a flock.
They just go higher and higher
and higher and higher until they disappear.
So we cannot see them.
So you can't follow the Kōlea north or south either.
You can't see them they're too high.
-: That's amazing.
But go ahead, sorry.
-: Well it's a good reason really that we wrote the book
so we can look up the numbers
and the things that questions that people have.
So that really is a good source
'cause we put all the information
that Wally has studied all of his life
is adult life is in there.
And so that's really a nice reference.
-: All right, there's a last question.
So a lot of people are using apps and things.
Are there any plan to integrate observations from sources
such as iNaturalist or eBird into your count?
-: Well people do use eBird
and there's a lot of Kōlea put into eBird
and iNaturalist, but the big thing for us is
we are looking at specific times
and those we can get some data from that,
but no, the answer is no, we're not coordinating with that.
So we're doing our own Kōlea count
because of the specific months.
So for certain times and certain places,
we wanna know how many birds are in Kailua Beach Park
between December 1st and March 31st
and that's a little out of the range of what eBird
and iNaturalist does,
but it's still eBird and iNaturalist
are still great resources to bird spotting birds
but ours is separate from that.
-: Yeah, great.
Well mahalo Susan for your time and for an excellent talk.
We have a few more questions,
we'll send those back out to you
and hopefully our audience is inspired
to go out and count their neighborhood Kōlea
or get involved in an count project.
It's really a neat project.
So again, mahalo for awesome presentation.
-: Well thank you,
thank you for letting me share this too
with the Hawaiʻi Audubon Society's project.
So that's a great thing.
-: Yeah, exciting, exciting.
So I have a few closing slides here.
So this presentation
as well as all our presentations are archived.
We recorded this presentation
and we need to caption it first before posting.
So it'll take us a week,
maybe two weeks to get that up online.
But that's the website where it will be hosted
and once it's up and if you attended,
we will, you know, when that recording is available,
you will also get a certificate of attendance
for the presentation for professional development
or whatever other purpose you might have for that.
And you'll get that via email in a couple of days.
And we do have a really cool upcoming webinar in April.
It is the, this season for our research partner,
Deep Sea Research Partner, Ocean Exploration Trust
will be conducting expeditions aboard
their EV exploration vessel Nautilus
in the Pacific and in Papahānaumokuākea in a few months.
So you can join that presentation to learn about that,
the upcoming expeditions,
what we'll be doing and how you can participate
and if you're a teacher,
how you can connect your classroom to the Nautilus
and talk to us live while they're out there.
It's really exciting opportunity.
And also we wanna hear back from you feedback
about this presentation and others you might want to hear.
So please fill out the survey at the end
and let us know what you'd like to see,
what we can do better
or comments about what we're doing great.
So mahalo for joining us
and coming up on my favorite holiday.
Happy St. Patrick's Day tomorrow.
I did one of those genetic tests and I'm like 87% Irish
obliged to ask.
But thank you everybody for joining us
and we look forward to seeing you next month
on our next webinar.
Aloha.