Hawaii Birds: Love in the Air
Posted at 3:14 pm May 8, 2008 by Karen McKeogh
Female puaiohi with nesting material
It’s breeding season here at the Maui Bird Conservation Center (MBCC), and that means all the occupants (the staff, interns, and birds) are very busy!
It all starts with planning and preparation. The staff and interns work hard in the weeks leading up to breeding season building nest platforms, putting up nest boxes, and collecting various nesting materials that the birds can use to build their nests. Nest cameras are set up in breeding females’ aviaries so that nesting behavior can be observed around the clock.
‘Alala sharing enrichment food items
Once all the materials are in place, it is time to socialize males and females a little at a time and watch the birds’ behaviors, good and bad. This part of the process feels a little bit like chaperoning a school dance, except that we want the amorous couple to go all the way! This year at MBCC we have three pairs of breeding puaiohi, three pairs of Maui parrotbills, and three pairs of ‘alala.
The Hawaiian crow, or ‘alala, is critically endangered, and breeding season for this species is especially important. Much thought and planning goes in to every step of the process. Socializations start with 20-minute sessions to watch for the crows’ initial reactions to each other. This new and sudden interaction can lead to positive results, such as wooing and copulation. It could also very easily go the other way with contact aggression and fighting. As the crows grow more comfortable with each other and within each other’s aviaries, the sessions are lengthened and will eventually last the entire day. It only takes one good socialization to produce results, but allowing for that perfect moment to occur is risky business.
Puaiohi chick in nesting cup
So far this year we have three puaiohi hatchlings that the staff are hand raising, and they are doing great! One is now three weeks old and is learning to eat on his own. The second was hatched one week ago and is slowly and painfully growing in feathers. The last is only a few days old. The chicks hatch featherless and blind and are completely dependent on their substitute parents, the staff. Over the next 40 days they grow bigger and stronger, learn how to eat by themselves, fledge the nest, and eventually learn to fly. Whether these chicks are later released on Kauai or become captive breeders, they, like all the new arrivals, are valuable to the survival of the species. And that makes our work here so important!
Preparing diets for the birds
We also have four more eggs in the incubators that are set to hatch within the next few days. Every day the eggs are weighed to monitor the amount of fluid that is being lost. The eggs are kept in highly sensitive incubators that can be adjusted to the most exact degrees of heat and humidity, depending on the specific conditions the egg needs to properly develop. The eggs are also candled periodically to watch for specific stages in development. What we look for during candling are signs of healthy egg development; blood vessels, embryo growth and movement, and expansion of the air cell.
Busy birds mean busy days for the staff at MBCC! We will keep you posted on our progress throughout breeding season. In the meantime, send lusty thoughts our way!
Karen McKeogh is an intern at the San Diego Zoo’s Maui Bird Conservation Center.
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May 8th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Good luck to you in this important endeavor. Hope you see lots of courting and evidence of success in the form of many eggs. Enjoyed the humor in the blog. As a former Hawaiian, I appreciate all you do in saving these endangered birds.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Hi
Do you incubate and hatch all of the eggs or do you allow the birds to have a couple to incubate themselves? I would think that they need to know what to do and how to care for their young so that they can pass this knowledge down the generations.
Thankfully, with your help, there will be many more generations.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Hi! I agree with Marie! Why can’t the mom and dad puaiohis raise their own chicks after they hatch? The parents aren’t even allowed to sit on their own eggs! You’re doing a great job in getting these birds back up to better numbers, but these chicks need to know how to be puaiohis to be successful whether they are in a sanctuary or out in the wild. Can you give us an explanation about this process, please? Will appreciate it alot! Good luck on the rest of the eggs!
Chari Mercier
St. Pete, FL
May 14th, 2008 at 10:29 am
If I understood one of your previous blogs, you remove the eggs from the parents to encourage them to lay more eggs. Is that correct?
And may all six of your ‘Alala be very horny little buggers this year!
May 14th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. There are several reasons we remove the eggs from the parents in order to artificially incubate and rear the chicks. The most important reason is to maximize production through the process of ” double-clutching.” Nearly all species of birds re-lay after eggs have been removed. This natural ability to replace lost eggs is especially valuable in the wild. Nests often fail due to predation, weather, and infertility. Most bird species are capable of laying several clutches of eggs in a season. By taking advantage of this ability to lay several clutches, we are able to increase our production of chicks. By rearing several clutches of eggs from each breeding pair, we can reach our goal for recovery of the Hawaiian endangered species much more quickly.
The second reason for removing eggs is because we are actually more successful ” parents” than the actual parents. In captivity, females (the female does most, if not all, of the incubation) don’t always incubate very well, and the parents don’t always feed their chicks very well. Our success rate at artificial rearing is much better than parent-rearing.
The concern over the chicks knowing how to be birds without being reared by a natural parent is a legitimate issue. We want the chicks to behave like the species they are so they will survive if released and breed with their own species (and be good parents!). One way we avoid imprinting on the human caretakers is by always rearing a chick with another chick of its own species. This allows them to imprint on each other. If we only have one chick of a species, we may raise two chicks of different species together. If we only have one chick, then we rear that one chick with a mirror so it can at least see ” another” chick in the mirror. Through all of the rearing process we also play the correct bird songs on a tape so they can hear the music of their parents. In the case of the alala, we actually feed the chicks with an alala puppet so they can see their parents (even though our hand is in the puppet). All of these precautions seem to work well–the puaiohi that we have released over the past 9 years in the Alakai Swamp on Kauai have bred very well in the wild–with other captive-reared birds and with the wild birds as well. This tells us that we have raised puaiohi that know they are puaiohi and they know how to breed and survive in the wild.
By using artificial incubation and rearing techniques, we can maximize production as well as maximizing the behavioral repertoire required to be survivors and breeders in the wild. The best of all worlds.
Thank you all again for your thoughtful comments.
Alan Lieberman is the conservation program manager for the Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Thank you, Alan! Very good explanation of your breeding process and egg rearing! That does explain alot of things. I still have to maintain that the chick’s parents are needed to parent their chicks along the way, tho. But, it looks like you all have this down pretty well, with a lot of trial and error over the years. Good luck with the rest of the eggs, and hopefully you will be able to release some of these Hawaiian birds back to the wild in Hawaii real soon!
Chari Mercier
St. Pete, FL
May 16th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Well i hope to here about some chicks soon!:)
And i’m glad your helping with these beutiful Puaioha’s numbers!
I had a question thats goes with Chari’s now when you seperate them do you raise them your selves? And if you do that wont they like humans so if their in the wild and go to someone who wants to hurt them can’t that put them in danger? Pleas give us an update soon!