Leaving Moku o Keawe

I skipped the morning birding  because I needed to finish packing and close up the house. I also had a couple other tasks to do before leaving. Specifically, I needed to mark the anthurium beds and also mark the approximate location for the fence. For right now I am having Aikane work on re-establishing the 2 beds by the garage & kitchen. After the sewing room is enlarged I will have them work on whether there will be enough room for a bed along that side; it may be along the fence rather than next to the house.

Blue marks the 1st bed, yellow for #2, & pink (which looks white here) is corner of sewing room extension.

While I was going to mark the northerly end for the fence a reddish bird flew up and landed in the shrub near the neighbor's fence. I had never seen it before but I am pretty sure it was a Red Avadavat; they are uniquely marked. It flew off so quickly after that I did not have time to get a photo. I am going to set the fence up so that a vehicle can pull all the way off the road before it has to stop for the gate.


As I was marking the anthurium beds I noticed that one of the rat baits by the persimmon was gnawed on. After finishing marking the beds and the fence line I checked all the rat baits. I had put baits around the base of the persimmon and puakenikeni trees because these are the probable access point for the rats to get to the roof. And I put bait around the base of the macadamia nut tree since I can see fresh signs of them gnawing on the nuts that have dropped. The last place I put the bait was in the holes of the concrete hollow tile blocks that I set up yesterday, it looked like a place a rat might explore. Besides the gnawed bait at the persimmon tree I also found one at the blocks; I didn't find any at the macadamia because they were all gone! I am wondering if the feral pigs ate them? What does rat bait do to pigs?

Bait under persimmon tree was gnawed on.

Bait inside concrete block was removed and eaten.

No baits were seen anywhere around the macadamia.

But fresh pig poop was found near macadamia tree.

When the ProVision Solar guys were here I made a serendipitous discovery; burning a mosquito coil in the outside toilet stall keeps the mosquitoes away from the kitchen door better than burning one right by the door. When ProVision was here I would go out about 8 and light a mosquito coil; it would burn until about 4 pm. For those 3 days I did not get bitten when I went out the kitchen door or puttered around in the garage. I will have to remember this for when there are a lot of people here.


On the way out I dropped off a bag of Meyer lemons with Joy. I didn't want the ripe ones to sit on the tree until they fell off. There are a lot more of them there.



I grabbed a Garden Burger at the airport. I really shouldn't have, it was overpriced and full of carbs. But I had not had anything for breakfast so I figured I was doing okay for my daily carb amount. There's no photo of my lunch because it was not photogenic.

While waiting for my flight to leave I decided to bird. The main species were House Sparrows and Zebra Doves, both begging for food from people eating at the gate. Because Kona International is an open airport with no walls or air conditioning the birds can fly right through. I saw a lot more birds here than I have seen at any other airport.

House Sparrows begging for food.

Open air terminal. Yes, you walk down a ramp & across the tarmac to get to the terminal.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau to Evelyn & Da Kine Sistah!