Yoo-Hoo from Honolulu! (family photos)

 

Hula Cats in Waikiki!

A relaxing stroll along the river

Lava World: Hawaiian timelapse

Maui meows and birds on twitter

I captured some video here (around the 2:30 mark) which gives you an idea of the Maui lovebird "problem" - an invasive, non-native bird species capable of wreaking havoc on the environment, which is also cute as a green-feathered, peach-faced button. I adore birds and have made a hobby of observing them (one of the benefits of slowing down in retirement - it's hard for me to believe now that they were there all the time, right in my back yard, and I was oblivious to them.) These guys captivated me because they, unexpectedly, seemed attracted to me, but it was a love-hate thing. A meowing cat on the ground below the lanai added some excitement, though the birds were smart enough to keep well out of its way. 

One little guy kept coming around - I could tell it was him because he looked like he had an injury under his beak - scolding and blatting at me, then suddenly falling asleep in that adorable puffy, winky-eyed bird way. I kept wondering where this strange ragtag flock had come from, and why some of them were obvious hybrids or mutations - colors that would never result from random wild breeding. Were people just opening the cage door, or what? 

This may be our last vacation, which is why I'm posting so much on it. I've had to make the best of it. I am not a natural globe-trotter, we have very little money, and my health, while better than it was 15 years ago, is maintained with the benefit of multiple prescriptions. If I ever got separated from them for any length of time, I am not sure what would happen. Time zone shifts I can't handle (though it only bothered me this time after I got home and had to do Christmas). My mate's knees are awful, and he hates planes. So I am left to make the best of this one last glorious holiday. 

Wild Lovebirds of Maui: the rest of the story

It’s a Love Hate Relationship when it comes to lovebirds

SEP 8, 2013

The wild lovebird population in South and East Maui has “gotten out of control” in the last couple of years, according to wildlife officials and conservationists.

“They (lovebirds) are loud and cheery to some, shrill and awful to others,” state wildlife biologist and bird specialist Fern Duvall said. “There are people who love to see them and feed them, but others are losing mangos, papayas and fruits of all kinds to these birds.”

Additionally, Duvall said, the little parrots chew into homes and bore holes under and along the eaves, which may destroy the integrity of a house.

The largest known lovebird population is in the Wailea-Makena area, where a recent study by the Maui Invasive Species Committee counted “well over 100 free-flying lovebirds.” Many perch in the Maui Meadows area.

“When I do see them (lovebirds), it’s a pleasant thing to see, they give the place a tropical jungle feel,” said Drew Huey, who has lived in Maui Meadows for the past 10 years. He said that he started noticing significantly more wild lovebirds within the past year, with flocks of at least 15 birds usually perched in trees during morning hours.

“They don’t bother me, but I could see that if they were eating all my fruits, I’m probably not going to love the lovebirds as much,” Huey said.

The rate at which the wild lovebird population has grown is “definitely alarming” to some local habitat conservationists.

“A lot of times what happens with an invasive species (like the lovebird) is that they start out as a nuisance, and then all of a sudden you get this population explosion, and it hits a threshold where suddenly people are really aware of the problem and you end up with a situation where it may be beyond control,” said Maui Invasive Species Committee Manager Teya Penniman.

She added that while the South Maui colony may be a nuisance for residents living in the area, it is a colony in the tropical forests of East Maui – around Nahiku – that is most alarming.

“Parrot species in the wild can damage fruits of native plants, which are already under tremendous pressure as it is,” Penniman said.

Because Nahiku is in a more remote and unpopulated area, conservationists have not been able to secure an estimate of how many wild lovebirds are nesting in East Maui.

The little birds were originally brought to Hawaii from Africa as domestic pets, but eventually may have escaped their cages or owners may have set them free intentionally, not realizing detrimental effects to the environment, Duvall said. Because Maui’s tropical climate and abundance of fruit are reminiscent of their homeland, it is easy for lovebirds to survive and breed in the wild.

“I remember seeing a special on TV about the Mitred conures in East Maui, so I know they (non-native birds in the wild) can become a pest,” said John Guard, who owns The Pet Shop in Kahului.

A few years ago, a large colony of Mitred conures (a large parrot species native to South America) in Haiku threatened to displace native seabirds and spread invasive plant seeds. Efforts to remove the invasive parrots have been ongoing, Penniman said.

The Maui Pet Shop sells, on average, six to eight lovebirds every month and carries a handful of varieties, including petrie, black-mas
ked and blue-masked lovebirds. Each bird is priced between $50 and $100.

“They’re a highly intelligent bird, very noisy and destructive, but they can also be very charming and generally cute,” Guard said.

Because community feelings toward the birds are so conflicted, it is hard to set any plan of action at this point, wildlife officials said.

“We have no plans to take any kind of control action,” Penniman said. “Our plate is quite full and 
we don’t have the staff or the resources to take on something like this (especially when) there are divergent opinions about them (wild lovebirds).”

If the population did continue to grow to a point where the birds posed an immediate threat to their surrounding environment, there are options other than capturing and destroying the birds.

The ideal and most humane solution, Penniman said, would be to facilitate an aviary for the lovebirds, but the committee currently lacks the means to start one.

Individuals who wish to report a wild lovebird problem may request a wildlife control permit by calling the Maui Invasive Species Committee at 573-6472.

* Eileen Chao can be reached at echao@mauinews.com.

Wild lovebirds of Maui

I was astonished, though maybe I shouldn't have been, to see flocks of wild lovebirds on Maui, screeching and dive-bombing and doing all the things lovebirds do. I had two of them, you see - the second one died before I could even get to know her, and it broke my heart (though as a result, we ended up with a cat who is my dear companion and familiar). When I got home I looked it up (I don't have a phone attached to my arm/brain, unlike 95% of the human race), and apparently these are former pets who escaped, were abandoned, or got loose during tropical storms. A lot of people keep open-air aviaries in Hawaii, so such a thing is quite possible. Lovebirds, like most birds, are survivors and quickly find their niche. With year-round warm weather, food aplenty, no natural enemies, and lots of nooks for nesting (mostly under the eves of tourist condos), they're thriving and multiplying like mad.

This has caused problems: their screeching is not particularly pleasing, unlike the exotic jungle calls that fascinate tourists. What I noticed is that they're not quite wild: if I whistled or chirped, they would approach, shrieking irritably, and sometimes they sat on the railing of the lanai observing me. There was an air conditioner nearby, and they'd sit on it and scold me from a safe distance. The guano these things produce is prodigious, one of the reasons the locals don't like them. It splatters all over the place, down walls, on sidewalks, hardens like cement. But as with the burgeoning wild chicken population, animal lovers won't allow a cull, and you can't live-trap these babies, believe me - they move like peach-and-green lightning. 

So, unexpectedly, I had many lovebird encounters while on holiday, and captured some of it on video. In particular I noticed a pearl-grey specimen which could only have been bred in captivity. It's a mutation that wouldn't happen in the wild. That bird must have a story.

Maui, my island home (for 9 days!)

(I HATE it when people post their boastful deluxe vacation photos for the sole purpose of making everyone else jealous and depressed at the shabbiness of their own uneventful lives. I do this only as an act of vengeance. Not that they'll notice.) 

 

The Hawaiian Cable Guy (raw footage)

I guess I could call this raw footage. And while I usually try to put more care and effort into my YouTube videos, sometimes I get so fed up with all the unedited dreck that gets literally millions of views that I want to just throw it up there, which is what I did here.

Our TVs didn't work in Maui - well, who cares, except that our phone didn't either! - so we told the main desk, and they sent up the Cable Guy, an all-purpose maintenance man whom I later saw supervising the trimming of the hedges around the condo. I couldn't get a shot of him (this isn't him in the thumbnail) because that wouldn't be fair, and he'd hate it and think he was being "surveilled", which he wasn't. But he said so many cool things, and in such a unique voice, I had to try to capture some of the audio. So I wore a wire.

We liked this guy a lot, but because he had to come back several times (our door lock failed and had to be replaced; the phone, a push-button with a cord, STILL didn't work; the ancient old-style TV in our bedroom had to be carried out like a dead body), he sort of fell out of love with us. We felt kind of bad about this, but not enough to NOT post this. It's long and lumpy and about as bad as 90% of what I see on YouTube, only I don't make any money from it.

May I say, before I hang up, that I think YouTube has been ruined by gamers and beauty experts and blah, blah, blah,when it used to be quirky and interesting and fun. But that's over now. Why do human beings always ruin everything that's good? It's choked with commercial stuff that "comes at you", most of it really obnoxious. With few exceptions, my videos get 2 or 3 views, or sometimes no views at all. I make them for myself, to keep them in an accessible place, and so that I can make playlists, which is fun. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the saga of the Hawaiian Cable Guy, taken by hidden camera. 

Ghost birds of Maui

We remember these graceful birds (which at first we thought were herons) from other trips to Maui. They're cattle egrets, semi-tame birds which hang around condo developments waiting for the maintenance person to trim hedges and stir up the best-tasting bugs. I was sad to hear that islanders dislike these birds, which were imported to eat some sort of specific pest, with the usual results (eating all the wrong things: nobody handed them the menu when they arrived). But I think they're lovely, graceful ghosts. They can come and eat in my back yard any time.

My gecko encounter on Maui

This might just be my favorite of the hundred or so videos I took on Maui in December. This gecko was so majestic, and so huge, that he might not even have been a gecko. He might have been an anole, a similar-looking creature which grows to twice the size. I'm trying to figure out if this one had sticky pads on its toes. What do you think? It might be an anole, after all, but he looked like velvet, and regarded me with what seemed like intelligent eyes. OK, I know that's fanciful, but he was just adorable, and stayed for a long time (again, most un-gecko-like: most of them are seen only for a split-second as they dart back into a crack in the wall). The creature had a tail so long it wouldn't even fit in the frame, and was always partially hidden behind something. I'm still trying to figure out the size of it - at least a foot long nose-to-tail, perhaps longer. Geckos run four, six inches or so. As a kid I loved loved LOVED reptiles and amphibians, had a chameleon (actually, an anole), a fire newt, and a whole collection of frogs, toads and turtles, not to mention a snake or two. I longed for a salamander, but never found one. This gecko would have sent me into rhapsodies of joy. I just had to wait for it, I guess, though waiting more than 50 years for something can be tiring.

Maui: from day to dusk

Night falls incredibly fast in the tropics. No way could I capture it, but I tried! Once I had brought all my videos home for editing, I realized I had in fact filmed through a keyhole, resulting in a postage stamp. 

But for all that, the videos stir some memories of a heavenly-sweet time. It's likely to be our last "big" trip for a while, perhaps forever. I did not realize until I got home that the sassy black birds I kept seeing and hearing were mynah birds. Every time I saw one it was singing a different song, with its uncanny ability to mimic everyone and everything around it. It was even more surprising to find out that this was yet another non-native species brought in to control pests, resulting in even worse problems (levelling fields of crops, plastering the roofs of condos with guano). Still, I loved the guys, screeching, strutting around and owning the place.

Baby back ribs at Beach Bums!

We LOVED this restaurant on Maui, one of those pulled-pork-reggae-music-seaside-breeze places with a Surf Conditions report on the wall (never mind a weather report!). Nobody talked about wind; it was swell, which is, I assume, the way wind makes waves. 

A swell place to eat, for that matter, so we came back a couple of days later, and I had the same thing: baby back ribs, cornbread to die for, pineapple coleslaw. Beach Bums brok da mout'. 

The world goes to sleep: Maui sunset

My little mongrel camera was not able to do justice to any of the sighing sights on our recent trip to Maui. As the sun sank, the sky changed color moment to moment. You don't have to wait for beautiful things here. Probably this is our last trip to a place we've visited five times. "Why?" someone asked me, puzzlement wrinkling his brow. Obviously this guy has money, and we don't. If you've got it, you can't imagine not having it. Nobody thinks about that. 

We're not exactly in the poorhouse, but we do write down all our expenses to the nearest dollar. So this was an especial treat. It's my favorite place, and it embraces you and amuses you, and the breezes are fragrant and the birds are lavish in their song. You don't have to actually DO anything in Hawaii. We drank guava juice and made toast out of that round, sweet Hawaiian bread we remembered from past trips. Even turning on the TV was a treat (and I'll be posting some samples of that, too - we love local TV and watch it wherever we go - which isn't far, let me tell you!). Probably the highlight was the gecko encounter, but now I'm starting to think he was too big for a gecko (he must have been over a foot long, including that incredible whip of a tail). Might have been an anole, though his face had an appealing Geico look. 

Maui kitchen: view from the window

Up to now I haven't even posted any pictures from our vacation in Maui. We got back shortly before  Christmas, and it was the biggest bummer. . . I mean, to have to suddenly get myself in some kind of mood for holly-jollity, when all I'd been doing was soaking my brains in guava and turning them into a quivering green jelly. I'd gotten into "oh, I'll do it after Hawaii" mode, leaving stuff undone, which is not my usual compulsive way. And we were hosting this year, doing the turkey, etc. etc. So things had piled up nastily, making for a rough homecoming. It's not that I didn't want to be home. I just wanted QUIET, and that's not what you get at Christmas. I wasn't ready for something I didn't want to be ready for to begin with. It was not dread so much as total disorientation, the bends I usually get after going away, only worse. I did not even have time to look at any of the hundred or so videos I took, or the photos Bill took, which I still haven't seen.

So today. . . still feeling fried, but having survived Christmas and Boxing Day and a few more days after that, I started looking at my trove. I published this one mainly because of the incredible bird song on it, along with audible yelling and arguing among the staff working for the condo. I stood in the kitchen and shot it out the window when the birds were at their noisy peak. I make an appearance in this, looking just dreadful, with no makeup on and bedroom hair. Oh well. Does it matter, in sweet Hawaii? No, it does not. It's a no-bra zone, as a friend of mine once said. This was a sentimental journey for us, the fifth time we've gone to the same part of Maui (Kihei), and we were amazed at how little it had changed, even down to the restaurants and menus (Aloha Lunch Plate: coconut prawns by the ocean!). But it was bittersweet, because we know we'll never be back. Between health issues (for both of us) and money issues (check), we just can't do holidays like that any more. And the cat was so heavily traumatized by being boarded (even in a luxury cat hotel) that we can't imagine putting him through that again. 

I am likely to post at least a few of the slew of videos, once I get them figured out. I hate people posting their expensive holiday videos, wagging their asses at me, so this is my revenge.

My heart is in Hawaii

Magic in Maui

                  Nakalele Blowhole, Maui, Hawaii 

Heaven and hell

Hula cats

Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say 

On a bright Hawaiian Christmas day

That's the island greeting that we send to you

From the land where palm trees sway

Here we know that Christmas 

will be green and bright

The sun will shine by day 

and all the stars at night

\

Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii's way 

To say Merry Christmas to you!