Hakalau

Work this week was great. We traveled to Hakalau, a bird reserve that is closed to the public, to do a monthly sampling of invertebrates living high up in the trees. Hakalau is probably some of the nicest remaining high elevation rain forest in Hawaii and is home to many of the highly endangered bird species. While I didn’t see anything extraordinarily rare and endangered (I was supposed to be insect searching, not bird watching!), it was hard to miss birds like the bright red I’iwi flitting around and feeding in the bright red blossoms of the Ohia trees. This was the prettiest area I have seen in Hawaii so far, and I forgot my camera. Luckily we will be traveling there every few weeks for bug work, so I should get a second chance to have a camera handy.
Work isn’t all frolicking around in the waist high grass of the rainforest understory. In fact, in Hakalau the work involves climbing from the understory up towards the canopy to collect insect samples from traps set 30-70 feet up in trees. Over the course of three days three of us climbed about 75 trees and collected samples from 100+ traps. The weather was amazing. Generally it rains continuously (something to do with being a rainforest), but we had sunny blue skies every day.
Walking between sites in the forest required some coordination and care as the ground was covered in (nonnative) grass that was several feet deep. From above, the grass looked fluffy and soft, but under the lush greenness was hidden fallen trees, rocks, and various other discrepancies in ground flatness. More than once I dodged a tree fern only to fall into an unseen hole, always while carrying a climbing rope, 20 gallon bucket containing samples, and an insect sweep net.
Now back home at the volcano I am getting better at my ant identification. Its simple: just follow a dichotomous key through characteristics like the number of nodes on the petiole, gaster constriction, carinate and reticulate frons, and adpressed setae (just to mention a few). Biologists love fancy big words. There is a whole dictionary of insect terminology and it now resides next to my microscope. Now I just need to figure out how to work this new vocabulary into daily conversation. (Nope, can't think of anything....)
In upcoming news: the great beach extravaganza, hopefully accompanied by some relevant photos.