The weather continues to be hazy, overcast and fog. Powerline Road was out of the question. I recently got a nice map of rare and endangered plants on the windward Saddle, which pointed out some curiosities in the tiny kipukas along Kaumana Trail. Since it's close to the road and the lower end of this is fairly sheltered I decided to search these kipukas for the first time under the ominous skies.
The first kipuka wasn't too surprising. Fairly common plants. I did a couple of bird counts. Bird counts for the day were quite consistent, averaging 5 'apapane, 2 i'iwi, 2 'elepaio, 1 'amakihi and 1 Japanese white-eye. This seemed to be the population of each of the larger kipukas. There was a house finch flyover once, and another that sounded like a yellow-fronted canary.
The second kipuka is where things started to get interesting. After getting in past the edge I found some steep slopes dropping into a ravine. This kipuka held a large population of astelia, and a surprisingly healthy population of sensitive pala fern. I found a single cyanea floribunda. I inspected the cyrtandra closely because someone had asked me about them once, but it seemed that they were most probably various sizes of common cyrtandra platyphylla. After a lot of searching I finally found one of the rare trees I was looking for - an 'anini. It even had a flower for me to photo. There were a lot of melicope and kolea trees. The lower ravines of the kipuka had been torn up a bit by pigs, but large sections of the kipuka were in very good shape.
I moved to a slightly larger kipuka further up. This one was a real shock. The substrate must be very old, because it had a few wet forest trees I usually only see in the old forests of windward Mauna Loa - particularly 'anini, 'oha wai, 'ohe mauka and 'opuhe. The most striking thing was a thriving population of pala ferns that I could never have imagined before! Many of them were huge. The topography was wild, with ridges and deep ravines. Amazing for such a tiny kipuka. I was only able to search a fraction of the kipuka with what was left of the afternoon. There was heavy pig damage in some of the ravines, but the topography was so severe that some areas remained pretty good. I have a hard time understanding why they bothered to fence "kipuka 21" when this was just a mile away!
Continued...
The first kipuka wasn't too surprising. Fairly common plants. I did a couple of bird counts. Bird counts for the day were quite consistent, averaging 5 'apapane, 2 i'iwi, 2 'elepaio, 1 'amakihi and 1 Japanese white-eye. This seemed to be the population of each of the larger kipukas. There was a house finch flyover once, and another that sounded like a yellow-fronted canary.
The second kipuka is where things started to get interesting. After getting in past the edge I found some steep slopes dropping into a ravine. This kipuka held a large population of astelia, and a surprisingly healthy population of sensitive pala fern. I found a single cyanea floribunda. I inspected the cyrtandra closely because someone had asked me about them once, but it seemed that they were most probably various sizes of common cyrtandra platyphylla. After a lot of searching I finally found one of the rare trees I was looking for - an 'anini. It even had a flower for me to photo. There were a lot of melicope and kolea trees. The lower ravines of the kipuka had been torn up a bit by pigs, but large sections of the kipuka were in very good shape.
I moved to a slightly larger kipuka further up. This one was a real shock. The substrate must be very old, because it had a few wet forest trees I usually only see in the old forests of windward Mauna Loa - particularly 'anini, 'oha wai, 'ohe mauka and 'opuhe. The most striking thing was a thriving population of pala ferns that I could never have imagined before! Many of them were huge. The topography was wild, with ridges and deep ravines. Amazing for such a tiny kipuka. I was only able to search a fraction of the kipuka with what was left of the afternoon. There was heavy pig damage in some of the ravines, but the topography was so severe that some areas remained pretty good. I have a hard time understanding why they bothered to fence "kipuka 21" when this was just a mile away!
Continued...
