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<\/a>The presentation by Kaleiheana-a-P\u014dhaku Stormcrow, a graduate student with the University of Hawai\u02bbi Wildlife Ecology Lab, stood out among the talks included in the session on seabirds and raptors. Others discussed how bird movements were tracked with radar or tags or described how their presence affects soil nutrients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stormcrow\u2019s work showed the abundance of information about pueo, the Hawaiian short-eared owl, that already exists in old Hawaiian language newspapers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They searched the Papakilo Database, which includes a database of native Hawaiian language newspapers of the 19th century, and identified 1,268 articles related to pueo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In searching just the terms \u201cmanu pueo\u201d and “pueo aumakua,\u201d Stormcrow unearthed and translated references to its appearance, the sounds it makes, its behaviors, its habitat, its diet, the cultural relationships the people had with it, and more. For the aumakua articles, Ralph Lalepa Koga from the University of Hawai\u02bbi\u2019s Hawai\u02bbinui\u0101kea (School of Hawaiian Knowledge) assisted with palapala (adding \u02bbokina & k\u0101hako). Stormcrow added that their mentor, Kawika Winter, also helped with translation, “as needed.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indigenous knowledge of nature is coded in cosmology and cultural practices, they explained. However, they added, it has been dismissed by conventional scientists, despite being \u201ca parallel and equal line of inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The elusive pueo, their abstract notes, is challenging to study. No population assessment or significant survey efforts have ever been done. The bird is considered endangered on O\u02bbahu and was included last year in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service\u2019s list of birds of conservation concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the limited information about pueo, its historical relationship with native Hawaiians has meant that it\u2019s often referred to in ka\u02bbao (legends), mo\u02bbolelo (histories), and \u02bb\u014dlelo no\u02bbeau (proverbial sayings), their abstract states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe can use this indigenous knowledge to fill some data gaps pertinent to life history and historical distribution and habitats of pueo and to co-develop new knowledge as we build bridges between indigenous science and conventional science,\u201d it continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The newspapers, printed between 1834 and 1948, are the largest archive of printed indigenous knowledge in the world, and are being used to resurrect biocultural knowledge and improve natural resource management, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The newspapers describe the pueo\u2019s large staring (nunui \u02bb\u0101\u02bb\u0101) eyes, hidden ears, strong pointed beak, long claws, broad wings, and size (\u201cbig as a mother hen\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Its song is described as like a whisper; its alarm call, a woman\u2019s wail; and there\u2019s a reference to the sound of pounding kapa, which they suggested refers to the wing claps pueo make during mating rituals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to mele, the pueo is the second born child of Hina (the moon) and the god K\u016b, and is the younger sibling of M\u0101ui, who according to legend pulled the Hawaiian Islands from the sea with a fish hook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBecause of that, [pueo] would have a pilina or relationship to the sea,\u201d they said. And, in fact, their archives search found a list of animals associated with the sea and the pueo was included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They added that they also found references to pueo at ponds or springs, open plains, dryland agricultural areas, remote and cloud forests, lo\u02bbi kalo, and streams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pueo are thought to live on all of the main Hawaiian islands. Stormcrow found 61 place names associated with pueo throughout the state: 21 on Hawai\u02bbi island, 14 on Maui, 14 on O\u02bbahu, 5 on Kaua\u02bbi, two on Lana\u02bbi, two on Moloka\u02bbi, and one on Ni\u02bbihau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to pueo being the younger sibling of M\u0101ui, which connects it to the sea, it is also considered to be the kinolau or physical manifestation of the god K\u0101ne. Stormcrow found references to pueo being called K\u0101nekupahu\u02bba or K\u0101neikapahu\u02bba, which translates to \u201cthe man standing at the forest border.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s interesting when you think about edge habitat and how there\u2019s a higher abundance of prey species. \u2026 I think that there\u2019s a ton of evidence indicating that [pueo] do hang out in those places a lot,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, with regard to habitat, they pointed to a rediscovered \u02bb\u014dlelo noe\u02bbau from an 1896 newspaper: \u201cWe have no place to refute you, Pueo, for you are the child born of this place and you know the lay of the land in this entire region as a man knows the berms of his taro field.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This saying indicates that the pueo perhaps had the largest home range of any other bird, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With regard to pueo behavior, Stormcrow noted that the bird, in addition to being the kinolau of K\u0101ne, is also the kinolau of the god K\u016b. They noted that K\u016b season, around March, is when the \u02bb\u0101\u02bb\u0101 star (Sirius) is on the horizon at sunset. It\u2019s also when pueo are generally more active, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They added that the newspapers also held a ton of references to pueo being nocturnal, a fact that has recently been supported by Hawai\u02bbi Wildife Ecology Lab research using VHF tags. That tagging work found that pueo are most active at night, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(This article has been edited to reflect Stormcrow’s proper pronouns, they\/them, and to more accurately describe how translations were done.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Marie-Sophie Garcia-Heras, a post-doctoral researcher with the University of Hawai\u02bbi, immediately followed Stormcrow, presenting results from efforts to track a handful of pueo fitted with GPS-VHF transmitters on O\u02bbahu last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[V]ery little is still known about its ecology including its daily\/annual movements. \u2026 [T]his was the first time pueo were tracked using this type of device,\u201d her abstract states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She found that pueo are somewhat territorial and that they often use natural habitats during the day and agricultural fields and urban areas at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey are very much nocturnal birds [and] very much use urban-related habitat,\u201d where they likely hunt rodents and insects, she said. Spending so much time in urban areas could lead to collisions with cars or exposures to pesticides, both of which could negatively affect their health and fitness, she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSome birds exhibited localized movements (within 10 km), while others travelled longer distances (2-3 trips up to 45 km), including visits to other islands (Moloka\u2018i, 73 km away),\u201d her abstract states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pueo that went to Moloka\u02bbi was there for three days before returning, she said, adding, \u201cInter-island movements had not been documented before with Western technology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In tracking the birds, Garcia-Heras also documented, for the first time in the world, an owl having a second clutch. \u201cThis same female had already successfully fledged three weeks earlier,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She added that her work on pueo movement has ended due to a lack of funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n In a 2015 article in \u02bbElepaio<\/em>, the journal of the Hawai\u02bbi Audubon Society, Andr\u00e9 Raine and Brooke McFarland reported a case where a swarm of feral honey bees forced a breeding pair of endangered Hawaiian petrels (\u02bbua\u02bbu) to abandon their burrow on Kaua\u02bbi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The birds tried repeatedly to return to the burrow, which they appeared to have been preparing for nesting, but quickly exited covered in bees. They eventually gave up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The event, captured on camera, occurred in the spring of 2013 and is believed to be the first recorded instance of feral honey bees causing Hawaiian petrels to abandon an active burrow, the article states. The bees were introduced to Hawai\u02bbi in 1857.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though field crew destroyed the hive that the bees had built in the back of the burrow, the petrel pair did not return to it that year or the one following.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his presentation at this year\u2019s Hawai\u02bbi Conservation Conference, Raine, who works for Archipelago Research & Conservation on Kaua\u02bbi, reported that the feral bee problem is getting worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While there were no recorded swarms or burrow takeovers from 2014-2016, they have been recorded every year since and they\u2019ve been found in more and more burrows each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even so, the threat is still relatively small. The number of burrows affected last year represented only 0.3 percent of all monitored burrows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bees have affected petrel burrows the most, but threatened Newell\u2019s shearwaters (\u02bba\u02bbo) and other unidentified species have also suffered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Kaua\u02bbi, managers documented bee swarms at more than 85 percent of management sites, Raine said, adding that burrow swarms have been confirmed on Lana\u02bbi and on Mauna Kea on Hawai\u02bbi Island, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hundreds to thousands of bees can overwhelm a burrow in a couple of hours, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of the 10 burrow takeovers, \u201csix resulted in a seabird mortality (including two instances where both adults of a breeding pair were killed),\u201d according to Raine\u2019s abstract. In another case, on Lana\u02bbi, a petrel chick died from bee stings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA lot of these burrows, the birds just don\u2019t come back,\u201d he said, <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even when bee hives were removed, a burrow takeover resulted in a failed breeding season 100 percent of the time. And in the following year, breeding occurred in only 28.6 percent of those burrows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Raine said the bees appear more likely to take over burrows located at the base of a cliff wall, rather than those in root systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Using vacuums to suck the bees out is one possible solution, he said, but it\u2019s a \u201cpretty daunting task.\u201d Workers would have to wear a protective suit in hot weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A preventative solution could be to remove hives found near bird colonies, as hives are constantly splitting and making new ones, he said. Swarm traps using pheromones is another possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bees threaten not only the birds but also the resource managers working to protect them. Raine said he\u2019s allergic to bees and doesn\u2019t want to get stung and go into anaphylactic shock while trying to photograph a bird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said that as climate change is increasing and mosquitoes range to higher elevations, the same may occur with the feral bees, allowing them to access higher altitude bird colonies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After Raine\u2019s talk, Jim Jacobi of the USGS commented, \u201cJust when you think with predator control things are getting better finally, all of a sudden then something like this comes along.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s not happening a lot, but the fact that we\u2019re seeing now every year, as opposed to never seeing it at all, we\u2019re now seeing one to two a year and seeing it across the board, I\u2019m worried it could be an emerging issue,\u201d Raines replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014Teresa Dawson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The theme of this year’s annual Hawaiʻi Conservation Conference, held July 18 to 22 via Zoom, was “Pilina Mauli Ola — Connections that Offer Resilience and Hope.” So along with presentations reporting the latest results of various natural resource studies and management … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499,26,25],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-14577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-august-2022","category-endangered-species","category-invasives","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\n\n\nTagging Study<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nThe Birds and the Bees<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>