I took the diagonal northeast trail from Stainback Highway down to the tall native forest near it's lower end. This trail has only small patches of alien timber plantation test plots at its upper end. Along the trail I did bird counts. Japanese white-eye outnumbered 'apapane slightly today. 'Elepaio were roughly as numerous as last weekend, and not a large number of (vocal) 'oma'o. The surprising thing was twice encountering 'amakihi (2-3 total) over 5 hours. I had previously detected maybe 3-5 single 'amakihi in this area over the whole of the last year.
At the twin 'aku I headed into the tall forest in a slightly different direction than last time. I soon was rewarded with a wonderful sight - a new colony of a dozen or more prickly baby cyanea in a mud hole - either the rare 'aku or the endangered 'aku 'aku. Lovely to see a whole colony coming up in the wild, but unfortunately that means they have no protection from feral pigs. The next mud pit up the chain actually had a small pig wallow in it, and I encountered fresh pig prints nearby. I'd love to think this colony of rare plants could be protected, which would take all of three hours and some wire to do, but in this country we spend billions of dollars a day burning, paving and destroying things, and only (relative) pennies on saving unique species for future millenia. :-C
After the mud pit area I encountered a fairly deep gully - perhaps an old lava channel. I looked in vain for more of the rare cyanea. I didn't find them, but I did encounter a nice pala (marattia douglasii) fern. Unfortunately I also found small clumps of ginger and strawberry guava, which I dutifully vanquished. I followed a nearby hunter trail back to the main trail, ending a short but successful outing.
At the twin 'aku I headed into the tall forest in a slightly different direction than last time. I soon was rewarded with a wonderful sight - a new colony of a dozen or more prickly baby cyanea in a mud hole - either the rare 'aku or the endangered 'aku 'aku. Lovely to see a whole colony coming up in the wild, but unfortunately that means they have no protection from feral pigs. The next mud pit up the chain actually had a small pig wallow in it, and I encountered fresh pig prints nearby. I'd love to think this colony of rare plants could be protected, which would take all of three hours and some wire to do, but in this country we spend billions of dollars a day burning, paving and destroying things, and only (relative) pennies on saving unique species for future millenia. :-C
After the mud pit area I encountered a fairly deep gully - perhaps an old lava channel. I looked in vain for more of the rare cyanea. I didn't find them, but I did encounter a nice pala (marattia douglasii) fern. Unfortunately I also found small clumps of ginger and strawberry guava, which I dutifully vanquished. I followed a nearby hunter trail back to the main trail, ending a short but successful outing.
