Very often we hear the comment, “So ugly, only a mother could love it.” Well, here at the Keauhou Bird Conservation Center, we must all be mothers, or at least surrogate mothers, because we really do have an emotional as well as professional bond with these `alala Corvus hawaiiensis chicks. This year’s `alala breeding program has been slower than we anticipated, but productive nevertheless. The three chicks being reared at the Center are now out of their hatchers and are being reared together in a box brooder. These youngsters are reared together, as they would be in nature, to help them develop the behaviors appropriate for an `alala. At about nine or ten days of age, they are covered in pinfeathers and down with their eye slits just beginning to open. As soon as they can see, we will begin to feed them with an `alala puppet so as not to imprint the chicks on their human “mothers.”
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To the fisherman, it’s hooking a fat-bellied bass just before the sun goes down. For the bird-watcher, it’s catching a glimpse of a feathered rarity, never before seen in this locale. And for the biologists at the Keauhou and Maui Bird Conservation Centers, it’s the perfectly made nest, filled with four intact eggs, each fertile and developing into an `alala embryo, soon to be chicks. Such was the thrill of peeking into Ula’s nest to confirm the four eggs, each perfectly shelled and each with a nascent embryo.
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