Dawn brought a ceiling of dark clouds over Hilo whose base looked much too high for good Saddle weather. I decided to try my luck on windward Mauna Loa, up on Stainback. After passing through most of the cloud layer and its sprinkles I stopped at the upper leg of Army Road, where I hoped to get a few bird counts in and look for interesting plants after the rain got going. Fortunately the clouds held their sprinkles back and I was able to spend the whole day in their wonderfully cool shade without getting wet. Super!
When I reached the end of Army Road and the weather remained calm, I decided to bushwack to the next road up, which I've only done once before and after that it took a year before I was interested in doing it again. The 'uluhe gets thicker up there, has in some places completely overgrown the old plantation road, and the plant variety is much lower. Much of the area was bulldozed heavily for a failed plantation of Mexican ash, and spindly ash trees stick up all over. However, this time I was able to appreciate the mysterious area more. At one point I tunneled through the 'uluhe wall beside the road to find myself standing on the edge of a steep drop, overlooking a broad depression beyond which was a great view of Kulani Cone. Kulani looked amazingly close, and suddenly my mind was full of dreams of trekking across the wild land in between, searching for rare plants. (they always hide in the most inaccessible places, right?) The view across the wilderness gave me a momentary vision of 'o'o and 'o'u flying across these same treetops, which were their last refuge before vanishing. I have been thinking of bushwacking across there to get to the next road up (the boundary of Kulani prison) for a while, but I've expected the landscape in that direction to be very formidable and don't quite know if the "road" along the prison boundary is off-limits or not. That boundary road would provide incredible access to the vast forests around Kulani, so it's very tempting to try.
There wasn't a great variety of birds, but there was an abundance of 'apapane. The area between Army Road and Kulani was full of 'apapane in full party mode, with occasionally several singing loudly from the same dead snag. This gave me a new appreciation for the importance of this unimpressive bit of landscape, which was fairly quiet last time I passed through. By the end of the day I counted 3 widely scattered i'iwi and one surprise 'amakihi. Nothing really unusual, native or alien. 'Elepaio were very scarce today.
When I reached the end of Army Road and the weather remained calm, I decided to bushwack to the next road up, which I've only done once before and after that it took a year before I was interested in doing it again. The 'uluhe gets thicker up there, has in some places completely overgrown the old plantation road, and the plant variety is much lower. Much of the area was bulldozed heavily for a failed plantation of Mexican ash, and spindly ash trees stick up all over. However, this time I was able to appreciate the mysterious area more. At one point I tunneled through the 'uluhe wall beside the road to find myself standing on the edge of a steep drop, overlooking a broad depression beyond which was a great view of Kulani Cone. Kulani looked amazingly close, and suddenly my mind was full of dreams of trekking across the wild land in between, searching for rare plants. (they always hide in the most inaccessible places, right?) The view across the wilderness gave me a momentary vision of 'o'o and 'o'u flying across these same treetops, which were their last refuge before vanishing. I have been thinking of bushwacking across there to get to the next road up (the boundary of Kulani prison) for a while, but I've expected the landscape in that direction to be very formidable and don't quite know if the "road" along the prison boundary is off-limits or not. That boundary road would provide incredible access to the vast forests around Kulani, so it's very tempting to try.
There wasn't a great variety of birds, but there was an abundance of 'apapane. The area between Army Road and Kulani was full of 'apapane in full party mode, with occasionally several singing loudly from the same dead snag. This gave me a new appreciation for the importance of this unimpressive bit of landscape, which was fairly quiet last time I passed through. By the end of the day I counted 3 widely scattered i'iwi and one surprise 'amakihi. Nothing really unusual, native or alien. 'Elepaio were very scarce today.
