O'ahu Seabird Aid Returns

WARNING!!! The photo at the very end of this post contains blood & a freshly flattened bird! Due to a glitch the Hawai'i Wildlife Center van will not be getting to O'ahu for a few days, so Tani, the new O'ahu Seabird Aid program manager, needed a ride. I picked her up from the Honolulu Zoo this afternoon; she had a Wedgetailed Shearwater that needed to be released. We took it down to Diamond Head Beach Park; it took about 15 minutes to get it to fly off. After that I took Tani to do some grocery shopping then back to the State Division of Forestry & Wildlife bunkhouse in Makiki Heights.

Tani gets ready to release the Wedgetailed Shearwater.

Getting ready to go!

... but it didn't go very far.

May be I can walk there?

OK, let's try flying again.

This water looks nice!

May be I can swim there.

Flying at last!

My morning walk was very blustery, so although the sun was out it was fairly cool. I saw Steph & Lorraine on Maunalani Circle; I was very glad to run in to them. I asked Steph to have her daughter Lauren call me. While I was on the Big Island I realized that Lauren has been learning how to cultivate endangered native plants so she might know how to make starts of the hapu'u! Or at the very least she should have access to people who would know how to do that. I told Steph I would even pay for Lauren's airfare to Kona to help me with making the starts. Lauren did call and we will be getting together soon!


I took another photo of the ulu in the morning light. It can be seen clearer in the morning light photo only because of the optics of the camera; human eyes are amazing!


When I arrived at Maunalani, Dad was still in bed; he told me that he needed to have a tooth pulled. Half an hour later he had totally forgotten about it; I think he was dreaming and I disturbed him when I entered the room. CNA Sharmaine said he had eaten all his papaya, a little of the oatmeal, & drank all hi supplements before I got here this morning!

There was no Namaste today, Marcus Mariotta & the Tennessee Titans were playing so that's what everyone was watching this morning. The Titans won 34-10 over the Patriots. I let Dad sleep peacefully while I did my mid-morning walk. It was blustery again; in fact, today has had more wind than when Hurricane Lane or Hurricane Olivia were off-shore!


Lunch today was Beef stir fry, Brown Rice, Tossed salad, Lemon meringue pie, and Split pea soup. The beef stir fry was more like beef stew than stir fry. I have decided to taste the soup each day; if its okay I'll drink it. If it's too bland I'll add the salt packet from the plasticware place setting; it will help me replace lost fluids & salt. Today's split pea soup was the thinnest split pea soup I have ever had! Dad ate one bite of the lemon meringue pie and his supplements.


For my afternoon walk I started at the upper parking lot, went down to the park, then to Lurline at Sierra and walked up Lurline back to the upper parking lot for 1.3 miles giving me a total of 4.51 miles for today.


When I come home Shiro comes to greet me; he meows for me to feed him and will follow me to my bedroom. He likes to sleep on my bed so since he appears to have become incontinent I have covered my entire bed with puppy pee pads. Its the least I can do to make him feel comfortable.


S'mores is settling in well. She is no longer skittish around us. In fact, she is wanting to get out of the bathroom and explore the rest of the house. Shiro knows she is here, he went in to the bathroom S'mores is in when The Roommates had her at the vet's; now S'mores also knows that he exists.

I downloaded the Duolingo app on my phone today. The Roommate Who Likes to Wash Dishes and I are using it to learn Hawaiian; The Potential Most Favorite Roommate had taken a couple of years of Hawaiian in college. Our plan is to be able to carry on simple household conversations in Hawaiian.


Happy Birthday to Swil Kanim & Chavie!

WARNING!!! PHOTO OF FRESH ROADKILL AT THE END OF THIS PARAGRAPH! I found this flattened Java Sparrow on the road near the park during the morning walk; the passing jogger must have been wondering what I was doing. The bird was very recently flattened; some blood was still oozing out of it. Java Sparrows are an introduced species, I'm not sure how invasive they are. I was surprised to find it flattened, they are fairly fast flyers and very alert to dangers. When I was volunteering at Sarvey Wildlife Care Center if I found a roadkill this fresh I would bag it, throw it in the roadkill freezer, & take it in on my next trip to Sarvey. Yes, I had a freezer dedicated to roadkill for Sarvey. We always had several recuperating animals that ate birds or other roadkill, except skunks. Only Great Horned Owls ate skunks but they were too smelly to pick up or keep in the freezer; the thiols would get all over you before you could get it in the bag. Harvesting other freshly killed animals from the road helped reduce our feed bill. (If we found a fresh roadkilled deer we had to call Sarvey, which then had to get permission from the State Fish & Wildlife Department before we could start cutting it up.) YOU'VE BEEN WARNED; HERE IT IS!

The thick red bill and black head with white cheeks are key identification features. The green thing is a leaf.