Friday was the last day of our first week in the field, and was only a half day since we needed to clear out of the Haleakala NP cabin in the afternoon. I was assigned to survey the first half of the East Waikamoi Gulch Trail, which requires a bit of a march through the conifer plantation. The trail wraps around the East and North faces of Pu'u Lu'au, and then follows the edge of the deep Waikamoi Gulch. The weather was oppressively sunny, making for an extremely sweaty march back upslope at the end of the day.

The upper section of the trail winds through the conifer plantations, which remind me of the boreal forest in Northern Minnesota. The most interesting moment of the day came when we flushed a golden pheasant near Pu'u Lu'au. I later found out that these conifer plantations are the expected habitat for golden pheasant, which are uncommon but expanding on Maui.

Just before we started to cross the North side of Pu'u Lu'au we emerged into the remnant native forest. These were the low trees of the upper elevation edge of the forest. Open areas were thick with many kinds of ferns that were sometimes chest-deep, which suggests that this area was heavily damaged by pigs and cattle before the preserve was created. Although the habitat on this trail is superficially the least interesting of those we surveyed, it nevertheless has many interesting plants, and last year was one of only two areas I found native snails. It is distinctly drier than all the other trails to the East, with a very different kind of forest. I found something like kadua acuminata, a sicyos vine, phyllostegia ambigua, many nice labordia hirtella trees and one of the tallest mamane trees I've ever seen.

As in 2009 I did not encounter any endangered birds on this trail, though parrotbills were seen here earlier in the week. Red birds were scarce, but little green jobs were numerous, including many 'alauahio for us to count. The open understory and steep slopes made for easier scenery photos, so I took a bunch.

Just one point count all day:
WEWGL02A: 0921  APAP-1 MAAL-4 HAAM-4 JAWE-5 RBLE-2 plus IIWI-1 

Along transect WEWGL01 0936-1030 we counted 15 MAAL