We have mahalo gift—our way of saying thank you. We’re giving away FREE five wallpaper images for your desktop or laptop. The turtle image here is one. You can find all five—with instructions on downloading—here.   

This column was supposed to be about World Oceans Day, an event that takes place every June 8. According to a press release from The Ocean Project, the goal of World Oceans Day is “to raise awareness about the crucial role the ocean plays in our lives, and the important ways people can help to protect our shared world ocean.” 

Now’s a good time to see red-tailed tropicbirds, especially at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge. They’re flying overhead. They’re squawking. And a few chicks on nests can be seen from one of the lookouts. What’s more this weekend is fee-free. As part of the Obama Adminstration’s America’s Great Outdoors initiative, all national parks, national wildlife refuges and many other areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management are closing their fee booths and throwing open their doors on Saturday, June 5th and Sunday, June 6th.

From the looks of this picture that I took yesterday on a remote north shore Kauai beach, this Hawaiian monk seal pup will only be snuggling with his mother for another day or two.  That’s because mom is starving. Or, at least, really, really hungry. This Hawaiian monk seal mother (known as H58 to scientists or “Rocky” to the rest of us folks), hasn’t had a decent meal since she hauled her heavy body out of the surf one Thursday evening 5 weeks ago to give birth to her son. 

Here, set to an instrumental music track by the Hawaiian musician Makana, is a slide show portraying the first week of life of an endangered Hawaiian monk seal. At this age, they are called "pups," because their Hawaiian name--'ilio holo i kauaua--translates to English as "dog running through the rough seas."

It's Friday.  That means it's "Lighthouse Day" for me, and I couldn't ask for a better day.  Sunny skies and 74-degree temperature warms my skin and just enough of a light trade breeze keeps me from overheating.

Two weeks ago, 028 was reported with a fishing hook stuck in the corner of her mouth. Four feet or more of fishing line trailed her, wrapping around her body. People said she tried to haul out at a south shore beach here on Kauai, but the line trapped under her body as she galumphed up the beach kept tugging the hook in the corner of her mouth. After a few attempts, she retreated back to the ocean.

A few weeks ago, I managed to fire off a few emails to Jim Darling in the height of the research season. For the past 30-some years, Jim has spent his winters in Hawaii—off the shores of west Maui, in particular—studying humpback whales. Jim’s primary field of research is whale song. Through Jim’s research, as I shared last week, we know that only the male whales sing and they do their primary singing in and around the breeding season. While Jim has studied gray whales off Vancouver and humpback whales throughout the North Pacific, he returns to Maui annually to focus on humpback singers and their song. 

In Hawaii, we take our endangered humpback whales seriously. February is known as Humpback Whale Awareness Month and the last Saturdays of January, February and March are officially known as Whale Count Days for the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. Hundreds of volunteers across the state brave potentially strong trade winds, pelting rain and searing sun to count humpback whales and record their behavior for four hours, starting at 8:00 a.m. We cancel in case of a tsunami, however, as was the case on Saturday, February 27, 2010, but we dutifully re-schedule, which is how I ended up on Crater Hill this past Saturday.

Many people wonder, my mother included, why I had to move so far away from home to find my home--from Missouri to Hawaii. A little over a year ago, I sat in my living room on Kauai watching history in the making on TV as Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States. President Obama spoke about community service. He spoke about volunteerism. 

Yesterday, we instrumented this 4-year-old female Hawaiian monk seal with a device that will track her movements in the water--how far off-shore she swims, how deep she dives, how often she dives, how many hours--and, possibly, days--she spends in the water.

After a mile-long hike and trek along a stretch of coastline on Kauai’s north shore, I am sitting under a heliotrope tree on the beach writing this. I can’t help but pull out my camera with the super-telephoto lens and snap a few pictures of the adult Laysan albatrosses skimming the ocean’s surf, but I didn’t pack my camera to take pictures of birds, as cute as they are. 

This ball of fluff otherwise known as a Laysan Albatross chick is 7 to 10 days old here. A full two-thirds of this albatross species uses the string of Hawaiian Islands stretching from Hawaii in the southeast to Midway in the northwest as its nesting grounds. For another few days one of its parents (both mom and dad are required to see this little guy--or girl--fledge come Julyish) will sit on it until it can thermoregulate on its own. 

At two weeks of age, the Hawaiian Monk Seal pup known as "KP4" takes pleasure in using his newly-discovered foreflippers. He flaps them. He slaps his face with them. He even swims with them. In his second week of life, he and mom go for short swims in the shallows. 

Meet "KP4." Here, he squawks at his mother. At six days of age, he's a cutie. But he hasn't quite figured out exactly where on mom's body that yummy-liquid-stuff dispenses. I spent three hours with the pair yesterday, and he poked mom in the belly, neck, back and tail the entire time. A few nudges he got right and milky liquid streamed down his throat--and elsewhere. 

It's a short walk from my position as an unsophisticated bird looker to birding mania, to some kind of performance attire, a laminated card, and a pair of very expensive binoculars. Thing is, I am inscrutably fond of birds. I pretend not to know them by name, but really, I do, I look them up and more and more, I recognize them by voice, too. After all, a coot does not sound like a duck, not one bit, really, and those little red hatted cardinals sound nothing like the morning doves that make such an appealing racket as the sun comes up over the Pacific. 

And now, a video that visually says what I tried to put into words in my last post: There is alway something happening at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge. 

Early November is not known for being a busy time in Hawai'i. It's like the pause between the in-breath and out-breath. That time right before the holidays when craft fairs, parties and concerts vie for spots on my calendar and when vacationers enjoy some time off from their hectic lives. And yet, for me, early November is one of the most exciting times in Hawai'i and that just might be the best-kept Hawaiian vacation secret around. 

On October 21, 2009, the first official whale sighting was reported off West Maui. (Those 45-foot, 45-ton behemoths sure like Maui.) So, I thought I'd share this footage of a whale filmed by NOAA. It's beautiful, especially because the slack key composition you hear playing was inspired by this footage. 

When the first Polynesians roamed the vast Pacific in search of land, they loaded their canoes with all kinds of plants and animals to sustain themselves once they arrived at their destination—which turned out to be a place we call Hawai’i. One of the animals with which they arrived? Pigs. Pigs are culturally significant to Hawai’i, as you may know from attending a lu’au.  But did you know they roam wild in and around civilization? 

For the past few days, we’ve experienced winter-like weather for our islands: partly sunny, partly cloudy, chance of rain. The trades come and go. I see squalls wafting across the ocean, but they never seem to make it ashore with nothing more than a few spatters of rain. The air is heavy with moisture, making it perfect weather for rainbows. 

Next month, we expect about 100 pairs of Laysan albatrosses will return to Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge to breed, lay a single and care for their one chick until it fledges some time in July. Factor in three birds for each nest site (not all birds breed), and I don’t even need a calculator to sum up the fact that Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge doesn’t contribute much to the overall Laysan albatross population. Not compared to Midway.  But that may change.

I took this picture of a friend's flower floating in her fish pond. Any guesses as to what kind of flower it is?

Wedge-tailed shearwaters are migratory. Just like the Pacific Golden Plover who arrived in my yard today from the Arctic—it will stay until April or May. Just like the Laysan albatross. Just like Lee Sass.  You know Lee Sass. He served as my mentor at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, answering my myriad of questions about the seabirds--and, let me tell you, I can ask an annoying amount of questions. I recounted an incident on this blog last December about a mysterious bird perched on a rock on Moku’ae’ae Island, just north of Kilauea Point. Without looking, Lee predicted the seabird in question was a Great Frigatebird. Even with binoculars, the bird was difficult to identify. A crowd gathered. We debated. Lee stuck with his original guess; the rest of us decided the perched bird was a brown booby. Lee wasn’t convinced.  

My husband and I recently built a home in Hawaii.  Well, rather, he built it, and I shopped for the decorative items, such as new furniture, curtains, light fixtures and paint color. That’s not how it works in the bird world, specifically Red-footed boobies.

The albatrosses started hatching earlier this month.  The process of pecking at their calcium enclosure and emerging into this world is called “pipping.”  To date, we have 89 nests and 48 chicks at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge.

 It was another Friday afternoon at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge when a man asked what kind of bird was perched on Moku’ae’ae Island.
I lifted my binoculars and spied the profile of a seabird with a dark-colored body. My fellow volunteer Lee asked, “What color is it?” “Dark,” I said

 The walk to the historic lighthouse at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge takes me about three minutes from the parking lot.  I call out hello to Dolly the Park Ranger at the fee booth (a mere $5 per person or free with a National Parks pass) as I go by. I note the burrows on the hillside where the wedge-tail shearwater chicks are starting to hatch at the back of three-foot tunnels.  I skirt a cliff that freefalls down to a cove where Hawaiian monk seals sometimes bask on smooth volcanic rock, and I follow the sidewalk on a narrow strip of land to the northernmost point in the main Hawaiian Islands.  As I top a slight hill, a panoramic view of the blue Pacific Ocean and a coastline of serpentine cliffs opens before me, just as if someone drew back a pair of heavy theater curtains.