Brooks Rownd | profile | all galleries >> Hawai'i >> Stranded In East Hawai'i >> Feb 5, 2011 - Pu'u Pili | tree view | thumbnails | slideshow |
Saturday was a Kohala Watershed Partnership volunteer day at Pu'u Pili in North Kohala, removing some of the thick ginger infestation at the base of the pu'u. The weather was unusually dry for a Pu'u Pili day, right to the end. I worked my way up one of the gulches, and again succeeded in finding some of the Pu'u Pili 'aku (cyanea tritomantha). This time they were flowering! There were at least 3 clumps of plants, but one was a battered clump in the bottom of the ravine. The flowers were more purple and shaped a little differently than those on the windward Mauna Loa plants. I did not have time to get further up the ravine and look for more. This is the 3rd ravine (of 3) on pu'u pili where I've seen 'aku colony. Later in the day I was also pleased to find a pilo kea (platydesma) in one of the areas where ginger has been cleared, and a patch of phyllostegia (warshaueri?) at the edge of the pasture weeds.
Pu'u Pili has a wonderful snail population, and succineid snails were literally falling on me as I worked my way up the ravine. I had to take care to move them out of the way as I cleared ginger. The 'aku was also covered with snails, as well as many native flies and other insects.
There were very few birds this trip - it was so quiet! I did five 10 minute counts, yielding:
1) 3 JAWE (white-eye), 1 RBLE (leiothrix);
2) 1 JAWE;
3) 3 JAWE, 3 RBLE, 1 HAAM ('amakihi);
4) 2 JAWE, 1 HAAM, 1 HAEL (elepaio);
5) 3 JAWE, 1 HAAM, 1 APAP ('apapane), 1 NOCA (n. cardinal)
The other linked Pu'u Pili photo galleries have more Pu'u Pili photos from previous visits.
On the way back to Hilo I stopped at the depressing Kalopa State Park. This is a mix of remnant native forest and depression-era timber plantation. Eucalyptus and Mexican ash dominate the forest, and the understory is very open and dead in many areas. I walked 1.4km of trail at the lower end of the park for 50 minutes counting birds. Total count was 18 white-eye, 5 n. cardinal, 1 hwamei, 1 kalij pheasant and 1 'io.