Puaiohi thrives in the Alaka’i Swamp

ALAKA’I SWAMP — Way up in the mist and ferns and greenery of the Alaka’i Swamp

lives a special creature, a bird found nowhere else on Earth but this basin of

boggy forest near Kaua’i’s summit.

It’s the puaiohi, or small Kaua’i

thrush, a rather plain little bird with muted, gray-brown coloring, long pink

legs and a simple trilling call.

But what sets the puaiohi apart from

many other rare Hawaiian forest birds are the remarkable efforts taken to save

it from extinction.

Just five years ago, it was believed that the puaiohi

population was down to perhaps 25 birds in the wild. Little was known about the

habits of this endemic species, and only two nests had ever been recorded.

The birds appeared to be headed toward the same dismal fate as Hawai’i’s

other birds.

About half of the state’s 140 native bird species and

subspecies are now extinct. Of those that remain, 50 percent are endangered and

some have not been seen or heard from in so long they are believed to be

gone.

Now, however, estimates of the wild puaiohi population have been

revised upward to 200 or 300 birds, the Peregrine Fund is raising puaiohi in

captivity at its Keauhou Bird Conservation Center on the Big Island and 19

captive-raised birds have been released in the swamp over the last two

years.

Most important, researchers say, those birds are now breeding with

their wild counterparts, bolstering goals of creating a new, self sustaining

colony of puaiohi in the Alaka’i.

But just as the project was gaining

steam, it’s suffered a setback. No monies were allocated this year to the

federal Biological Resources Division, the agency charged with monitoring the

birds after their release. The funding loss was sad news for Erik Tweed and

Jeff Foster, the two researchers who have spent hours in the swamp counting

birds, watching nests, observing behavior and dispersal patterns, and trapping

the rats that prey on eggs, chicks and nesting females.

Tweed says their

research was helping to shed new light on issues that could have applications

elsewhere in Hawai’i. For example, while the loss and degradation of feeding

and breeding habitat is usually cited as the main cause for the rapid decline

of Hawai’i’s forest birds in recent years, Tweed doesn’t think that’s the

biggest problem in the Alaka’i.

He points to other culprits, like avian

malaria and pox, which are carried by introduced mosquitos and birds and prove

deadly to the native birds that evolved with no resistance to such disease.

Introduced predators like rats, cats and pigs also take a toll on the birds,

along with the recent hurricanes.

“The Puaiohi project has just been a

small taste of something positive this past year, and is an excellent

opportunity to shed some light on conservation in Hawai’i,” Tweed says. “We

must continue research in the Alakai and determine whether or not this

management technique will work.”

Tweed says his agency is working to

develop a new proposal for monitoring the puaiohi, along with other Kaua’i

forest birds. Many of the Garden Island’s native birds are declining and

haven’t been studied very much. He says additional research could help some of

these species recover and also identify birds that should be given extra

protection now so they don’t end up as endangered species.

Similar field

studies paid off in a big way for the puaiohi. When researcher Tom Snetsinger

first began observing the birds in 1993, he accepted the prevailing belief that

they were on the brink of extinction. But after spending 600 days in the

Alakai, often knee-deep in mud, Snetsinger had not only learned a great deal

about puaiohi life history, he had discovered 30 to 40 nests made of woven

mosses, ferns and grasses tucked into protective cavities along stream banks

and narrow ravines.

The wealth of nests allowed Snetsinger to collect 15

wild puaiohi eggs, which were flown out of the wilderness by helicopter and

taken to a Kaua’i apartment, where they were incubated and hatched and then

sent to the Keauhou Bird Conservation Center for hand-rearing. Puaiohi are the

size of a human fingernail upon hatching and must be fed hourly between 6 a.m.

and 8 p.m. The chicks are raised with their siblings so they always see other

birds, and they listen to tape recordings of puaiohi vocalizations to learn

their own songs.

Under constant observation by video cameras, the

fledglings are kept in mosquito net-draped aviaries that are exposed to nearly

the same wet, cool conditions the birds will encounter in the Alakai. The

chicks even have a chance to develop a taste for their wild diet, feeding on

berries of native mamaki trees planted directly into the cinder soil underfoot

in the cages.

That initial egg collecting and hand-rearing produced

enoughcaptive-raised birds to form five pairs. These, in turn, produced the 14

chicks that were flown back to Kaua’i for four staggered releases last winter,

just in time to acclimate themselves before the spring breeding season. All the

birds were tagged, but only eight kept their radio transmitters and were

tracked through the 1999 spring breeding season.

These eight produced an

amazing 21 nests and seven fledglings. Three of the captive-raised females even

paired with wild males. But despite intensive baiting and trapping by Tweed and

Foster, rats managed to kill five nestlings and two adult females.

Although

the monitoring funds have been cut, the program is continuing. Five more

captive-raised birds were released this past February, says Alan Lieberman of

The Peregrine Fund.

“Meanwhile, another 12 puaiohi chicks have already

hatched at the Keauhou Bird Center, and more are expected before the breeding

season ends 20 (chicks) looks reachable,” Lieberman says. He plans to release

most of those chicks in the Alakai next winter, and Tweed and Foster hope they

will be around to keep an eye on the

birds.