 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Good afternoon and thanks for joining us here on likeable science on Think Tech Hawaii. It's another Friday afternoon and we're glad you're with us. Likeable science is all about how science is in all of our lives, a vital part of all of our lives, interesting, current and relevant to everyone. So we shouldn't be scared of it. We shouldn't try to relegate it to the ivory tower. We should embrace it and enjoy it. Today to help me explore that is Susan Scott. Welcome Susan. Thank you. Good to have you back here. Nice to be back. Susan is a naturalist, biologist, author, speaker, all kinds of things and she has a new book out called the Kolea. A beautiful, beautiful book. Actually it's truly, it is a stunning beautiful book and you were just telling me it won an award. It won an award from the Hawaii Publishers Association for her Best Natural History Book for the last two years. Congratulations. I'm really proud of it and happy for our Kolea and I'm the co-author of this. Right. Your other author is currently in Montana. Yeah, the my co-author is in Montana and he's the one who did all the research that got and all the pictures that got in there. Yes, beautiful pictures, all kinds of stuff, great things on the history of it of the stones they used to use to help catch them, how the Hawaiians caught them. Amazing, great information this book and so well presented. Well, thank you, thank you. Wally Johnson is the name of the researcher and he has been studying these birds most of his adult life and writing research papers on them that were kind of hard to find and for the public to get to and so I started writing about the birds in my column and. This is the Ocean Watch column. In my Ocean Watch column, I write a weekly column for the Starvertiser and someone years ago sent it to Wally in Bozeman, Montana and he sent me some of his papers knowing that I was interested. So we did that for some years and then a couple years ago said you know we need to get together on this and write a popular science book for the public so they have a place to look up the birds because people love their birds and one of the reasons they love the birds is because they are so adaptable to human beings. Right and maybe on that note we should show you got you gave us a series of pictures here. So can you get the first one of those up? So that's the book and that's Wally. The great thing about the references in this book is the references are Johnson Johnson Johnson Johnson. Wally is the only one who's done research on these for years and published a lot of papers and so the research was easy because they were all one person so if I asked Wally and he didn't know no one knows and so there were a few things you know we'd still like to know and he is actually still doing some research. So the birds are really popular in Hawaii because they're so adaptable and they have really taken advantage of our buildings our golf courses are mowing the lawns introducing alien insects and they they've just taken taken over so they're they're really quite tame they're wild birds but but they become accustomed enough to people and come to the same place every year each individual has its own foraging area because that's its survival that's its food and so every year if you have a bird in your yard you'll see that bird year after year and they live up to 20 years that that's really old for a bird mostly there they're eight to ten but but they have that they will do live up to 20 and so you get to know the birds and the birds get to know the people in the house and so I get lots of stories really fun stories from my column from people who say oh my bird I have one that said my bird won't go out of the backyard unless I open the gate and these birds can fly and so he said if he opens the gate the bird will walk through the gate and then it'll close it and then it forges around the front yard and then he opens the gate and it goes in the back I don't know if it's knocking and another reader said my neighbor put out a broken television set on the curb for pickup and his plover went out there and sat in front of the tv seeing its reflection obviously but looked like it was watching television and he said it was hilarious all the neighbors were watching the bird like this in the tv so so they're they're really charming birds and they're very that picture I showed is was my plover who comes up to the the lani and knows when the the screen was shut now lucy is a pretty old mellow dog and she didn't ever lunch after it but it knew if the screen was open it didn't come up there and if the screen was shut it would come up there and then I would give it some scrambled eggs which is what walley says we can feed them the birds that get to know us if you can get the bird away from the miners and the other ones because they all like scrambled eggs sure but it's protein and fat and that's that's really good food for them excellent so so maybe we'll get the next picture here and because this will help get people familiar with them in case you don't recognize them already and I think people have written to me it's like I had this beautiful bird in my yard this collared in my yard all winter and it looks like this and then come February March I had a different bird so this is the winter colors of these birds they change colors so the next picture this is the spring colors and both of them you can see look quite different all of them look like the former picture the males turn in this beautiful black black feathers on their face and breast and the females have more of a model color but it's still quite a change and so the bird was the same bird that the person had in their yard but people people don't know that you know it was hard they mold this is a these are breeding colors and so they're getting ready in these at this time to go to Alaska and that's where our birds go right and it's amazing and these birds fly obviously non-stop uh from here to Alaska right and that's many thousands of miles they leave around April 26 27th the date's pretty fixed because they go by light by the amount of light and they fly 3 000 miles non-stop right there's four ounce birds by that but in the spring they're about seven ounces but it's just an astonishing feat of nature to be able to fly over the Pacific Ocean they don't stop they get up to 100 miles an hour in the jet stream I mean you think their little feathers would just go flying off the 100 miles an hour I don't know if we how long we could stand it on but they're one of the reasons Wally wanted to make the subtitle of the book the amazing life of the Pacific goldblowers is because they are amazing yeah that that's really I mean I was going to say you know you talked about how they live considerably longer than similar sized birds this is the benefits of exercise right exactly and then they go there because they're going to raise chicks right and so no one knows if they form pair bonds here in Hawaii there's there's another population outside of Hawaii but our books mostly about the Kalea in Hawaii that's because Kalea is a Hawaiian word but there's another population in Asia so anyway the the birds go our Hawaii birds go to a certain area in Alaska that Wally has identified by by tracking the birds and and they mate the male makes a lovely little nest on the ground and the female chooses whichever male and nest she likes and they have four eggs she lays four eggs and that weighs four chicks the chicks are like chickens and that when they're hatched they immediately start eating as soon as they're dry they're walking around eating and they're in Alaska because there's 24 hours of light so they can eat 24 hours and the insects are just swarming right so I don't know if you've been there but no but I would barely breathe yeah and it's it's it's a it seems like such a crazy idea they would fly 3000 miles but what they're flying to is this banquet which is the only way they can have enough food so the chicks can eat and they have to grow up really fast and so yeah they can't delay their turn either no no and so so that's the reason and they've you know they've evolved to fly those distances there's other shore birds that do the same thing so yeah it really makes you appreciate nature yes I mean lots of birds migrate most of them much shorter than that most of them over land but these amazing sea over sea migration where you realize that there is no stopping right there's no there's no let's do this in two bounds instead of one the plover the pacifical and plovers that spend winters in Samoa Tahiti Palau the South Pacific Islands and I've seen them there and think I can't believe he's fool because it's even far for me to fly from here to Palau but they they stop over in Japan and eat insects in rice fields and other areas because they can't carry enough fat to make that long of a migration so that's one stop yeah a road will be short stop it's like a rice field stop yeah yeah so they'll stop and refuel yeah exactly and then going up and that's the wall he calls it a refueling stop yeah and so if they if they carried enough fat to make the trip they couldn't fly right so yeah no it's again a beautiful example of biological sort of mechanism how do you balance off that exactly yeah how much fat you can afford to carry and then and then the chicks mature fairly fast um they're flying in them they have their wings developed in a month i'm not sure they're actually flying but in august the females leave first exhausted from laying eggs if they lose their four eggs they can relay four more yeah i was reading that in just a matter of like a week yeah amazing total weight of the four eggs is the same weight as the female so it's an enormous uh energy expenditure right and so it's not no wonder the females get back to Hawaii and yeah and then the males stay with their chicks they don't they don't stay right with them because they're out all foraging for themselves but if it's cold or predators are nearby the males and the females both protect them so they show some parental care and they show parental care up until then when the males leave so we see the females in early august and every year people say wow they're back really early they're always back in early august it's just that there aren't that many we don't really not everyone sees them in august and then the males come next and this is in general and then the chicks stay as long as they can find food right and it's not snowing i mean once the weather changes and the insects are gone they eat berries so they can still eat berries but they get as much weight on them as they can before they take off again you think about the interesting biological pressures you have to be a very good at sort of sensing just just how long can you stay here eating exactly because you don't want to be caught by the first snow you're going to be losing right losing weight well the bad news is only about 20 percent of the chicks survive their first year in Hawaii so they've got to get here on their own they don't have any adult guidance that's just an instinct and then once they get here they've got to find their own territory and birds that already have staked out their territory will fight and and these birds are really skinny there's a picture in there of a nude first year bird that just looks emaciated so uh the good news is the 20 percent that make it through their first year live long lives yeah so i see empty spaces sometimes you know in my travels in my life that i think this would be a perfect spot for a kalea you could come over here because they don't really need that much space right no because no as long as there's a diversity of insects and i live near kailua beach park and there's there's four and right next not right next to each other but you can kind of see where the edges of their territories are and they're always the same ones and i know that because we tried to rescue one's got a broken leg i think i have a picture of the one with the broken leg uh one another reader called me and said there's a kalea who's just returned this was in uh september or no it was actually in um still in august she's returned and her leg's broken so we i went over and took this picture and we decided um my husband's a doctor and said it's dislocated that that's the ankle they have really long ankle bones uh it seems dislocated and if we could catch it we might be able to pop it back because you can do that in people right so we went to uh the bird was actually looking not bad and she's hopping around and walley said they live fine with one leg if we could have to even remove it that would be okay so the next picture was um i called uh one of walley's former colleagues who's here in hawai and this is called a net gun and these birds are very wary but if you just walk by and you act like you're not really paying attention you can you know you get get pretty close and so josh brought over the the net gun and we um tried to act very casual next picture and that's the net so when you fire the gun it's a co2 cartridge it throws the net out it's got little weights on those corners and then you know doesn't hurt the bird but catches it so next picture we tried josh shot once and he's done quite a few but he overshot because normally the birds when the pop goes it's a loud bang goes the bird flies forward and and storm we named this one storm flew sideways and so the net went over it and that bird really we were there for a couple good couple hours afterwards just saying oh i'm not trying to catch you and i said you know and so this is josh and that's storm and she was watching every thing he did and so he said i i can see her looking at me there's no way i'm going to get close as soon as he would try to he's loaded the gun again as soon as he got around she would take off you know and we didn't want to want to make her fly because she's already damaged so um i was there the next picture this is yesterday uh i sent you this picture earlier but but i was there yesterday and got an identical picture and she's still got the leg but she's fat yeah yeah so all we think she'll do better if we can catch her so we might try again but they're brilliant so and we're going to continue this conversation i've been told we need to take a short break here okay and uh susan scott is here with me here on likable science i'm your host ethan alan and we'll be back in just a minute this is think tech hawaii raising public awareness aloha i'm carol mon lee think tech hawaii is volunteer chief operating officer an occasional host and this is minky for the first time think tech hawaii is participating in an online web based fundraising campaign to raise 40 000 dollars your thanks think tech will run only during the month of november and you can help please donate what you can so think tech hawaii can continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming i've already made my donation and look forward to yours please send in your tax deductible contribution by going to this website www.thanksforthinktech.causevox.com on behalf of the community enriched by think tech hawaii's 30 plus weekly shows thank you mahalo and shisha for your generosity and you're back here on likable science here on think tech hawaii i'm your host ethan alan with me today in think tech studios is susan scott naturalist biologist author and we are talking about her new book uh the collia the hawaiian golden plover and we're going she was actually just telling us this amazing bird locally i guess over and you say collia uh the beach park right storm right uh with apparently a dislocated leg right and uh trying to catch it so you can help it uh although it sounds like you doesn't need that much help if it's able to avoid you so right well you don't want to hurt it right in the process of helping it right but um i think with what we might try again yeah i don't think she can migrate with that legs it kind of stands out sideways so so uh interesting okay and um and let's see was this the end of our pictures or okay okay great um um so these birds they they do this migration to alaska uh in this in the spring basically april end of april and then come back here in august basically and uh while they're here they're basically go out of breeding condition and are just relaxing and enjoying hawaii right right exactly and and bulking up from those 3000 mile flights as they do that twice a year right yeah and getting ready for the next double job is to get fat right for the migration both ways yeah and it's intriguing they're they're i mean their life it sounds like rolls around this whole holes are eating binge right they're here eating to fuel up for their journeys right there so their chicks can get enough food because their chicks couldn't survive on the small plots they have here basically right but the good news is we have enough we have imported a lot of uh alien insects and spiders and things that they can eat and so that's good for us they eat a lot of those things right right so these are these birds are good to have around yeah and we've we've opened up a lot of space by mowing the lawns they like the flat right there are some pictures in here of their preferred kind of habitat which is very much sort of more or less our preferred habitat punch pole cemetery right it's a great place for you so there's must be yeah goodly numbers of them there yes i think i think well i said there's about 100 and 100 acres and speaking of these birds oh you were just telling me when you came in about an amazing one you just well yeah i got an email yesterday that said uh from a reader who i don't know yet but i probably will he said i found a leucistic plover a leucistic and leucistic i looked up i i knew it had something to do with white but uh it's not albino but it's it's got a melanin disorder that makes it mostly white so this one has all white feathers it's got a few dark spots on its back but its eyes are dark so it probably does not have the vision problems that albinos have and um so i sent that to walley who's our worldwide plover expert and he said oh i have never heard of one really exciting so i drove out there this morning with my new camera and the reader is his name is bill kulk cok he said um it was right near the entrance where you drive in well these birds are so territorial they're so they're so accommodating to us they were there he was the she was there i named her blanche just so we don't say the bird with the leucistic bird which no no one else will know but uh blanche was right on the curb right on the edge there and i got in my car and she let me take a bunch of pictures she's mostly all white feathers just a few dark spots on her back and seems to be really healthy interesting because that again as with the albinos is somewhat of a disadvantage in the wild right they become their obvious target basically yes and the big target the big predators are cats feral cats and so at hey boat harbor next door is hey a estate park and people feed cats there i counted 35 in the parking lot uh about a year ago when i was there and i'm looking for a picture for a white turn book i'm writing of a feral cat and i thought well i'm in feral cat i have in here so i pulled in there there were 15 just all lying around and um that's her gonna be her biggest problem because it's really close and cats and that's you know they they seem pretty tame and there are four food dishes out so people are clearly feeding them so maybe she'll be okay but plovers are really alert to predators super alert so walley said i've not been to alaska with him when he's doing his his tag gps tagging but um he can't get anywhere near the same birds that you can walk pretty much up to here yeah it's very intriguing again it's just the birds intelligence that they have a sense of sort of context they know that when they're here people moving near them are of no concern but in alaska and there when they have chicks anything moving as a predator and they're very very wary and they have a bunch of strategies to uh i mean they one they can freeze and blend in quite well yeah but they can also they'll do a broken wing kind of strategy they pretend their wings broken and leave the predator away yeah yeah and then manage recover nicely that's right and then recover yeah um and they can't i mean i guess they can put up a good struggle to uh when push comes to shove right if they get yeah and there yeah there's picture of them uh fighting here in hawaii over territory and i had a couple readers have emailed me that their plover can beat up a mina their plover wins when they're fighting with a mina over food or sticks and the food thing a lot of people say don't feel wild birds and almost everybody does it's just one of those things it's our touch with wildlife it's our it's it's the thing that we as humans need i think to to see wildlife and to be connected exactly and so walley said if you if if you do decide to feed your bird uh because it does feel like your bird too there's just one to give them healthy food and mealworms are another thing besides the scrambled eggs but he has a picture of a guy who tamed his bird well enough to land on his hand and eat mealworms out of his hand and the bird lived i think 17 maybe 15 years and so clearly did find by by feeding it yeah yeah that's uh just want to be careful not to feed it with their cats around right or mongooses yeah i want to want to be sure that although i can't imagine any of those animals getting predators getting close to these birds because they're so wary of something like that you know a small animal like that would just totally scare them away right interesting that they can again they make that distinction and understand that people are no real threat to them here right exactly that's a very it's a contextual dependent but also discriminating right right the one thing they haven't learned is uh about barn owls so they sleep on flat roofs and at night they're up high they're usually fine but we have imported the state of hawai imported barn owls to control rodents now i didn't i didn't know that till i read that in this book actually in the 1950s and there's a lot of barn owls uh in hawaii and they are nocturnal predators so they just pick them off i've seen dead plovers out at flat island off kawaii beach park probably from the owls but they should presumably continue to do reasonably well with further development in some sense is just giving them more territory right right as we clear off what were agricultural fields that are not so useful to them basically exactly turn them into suburban yards that works for them yeah yeah unlike most wildlife it works for birds these birds in particular but yeah there's no official count but i think walley believes that they're doing just fine yeah that makes sense yeah that's uh there they are truly uh amazing creatures uh and it's so wonderful to have this this absolutely gorgeous uh guide to them that so it's thorough it's it's authoritative it's it's accessible which is which is you know i as you were saying earlier that's what you want to when you're doing a popular science book you can't you don't want to stick in a lot of scientific names you don't want to stick in a lot of jargon a lot of technical information but you've got nice beautiful diagrams and pictures uh very uh easy to understand but but a great deal of information it's it's truly a beautiful book um where are you off to next you because you're just back right yeah i'm just back from australia where craig and i have our sailboat in townsville and we had some great times on the great barrier reef i read about the ocean watch column and i'm off to midway and craig's going to go with me we are going to be counting albatrosses at midway at all and then after that pull out pull out i'll get it busy busy what are you doing in pullout i'm i'm leading a i'm the naturalist on a snorkeling trip for oceanic society okay so it's a job yeah i know life's tough it's a job and after that it's so busy here for us uh we're going to bangladesh to uh work in a clinic craig and i started in 1997 that's still going and doing well we had to skip last year there was some violence there but it seems to have been stopped and the uh state department thinks it's safe again so excellent well susan it was great having you on the show here again and uh susan scott co-author uh with walley johnson of hawai's colea a wonderful book highly encourage everyone to read it thank you very nice to have you here aloha thanks for inviting me again and join us next week for another episode of likable science