The author waiting for parrots.
Kauai. The Garden Island. A virtual paradise for endangered species including monk seals, green sea turtles, and humpback whales, the island is also home to many species that, well, weren’t here when Captain Cook “discovered” this island, the first of the Hawaiian islands he landed on, back in 1778. I use the word “discovered” gingerly here, with ethno-sensitivity, since the British weren’t the first human beings to find these beautiful atolls. No, that discovery was made by brown skinned men and women and children in out-rigger canoes equipped with sails some more than a thousand years before a white dude walked ashore. The original Hawaiians came from the Marquesas Islands and were of Polynesian derivation, bringing their own language, culture, and religion to the islands long before Cook deigned to “discover” them. Anyway, when they arrived, the Polynesian explorers found all sorts of unique and interesting critters on the island, including one mammal: the Hawaiian bat. Oh, you’ll find plenty of other mammals now roaming Kaua’i, including feral pigs, which were brought over by the original Polynesian settlers and then allowed to roam free across the Garden Island such that they are now hunted as pests. And of course there are ever present, constant, annoyingly obnoxious feral roosters seeking feral hens.
There exists an urban legend that these noisy fowl were released due to Hurricane Iniki in 1992. That, according to many other sources, is just not the case. Chickens were brought here, as were hogs, by original islanders in their canoes and have been running around loose on Kaua’i ever since. Other islands in the atoll have feral chickens too but they are controlled by another invasive species, the mongoose, which was imported from India to deal with another imported pest, the rat. Unfortunately, rats like to sleep during the day and are active at night, whereas the mongoose likes to hunt during the day and sleep at night, which means the rat and the mongoose rarely cross paths but the mongoose do hunt and eat both feral chickens and their eggs, reducing the populations of free roaming chickens on the other Hawaiian islands. The mongoose has not been introduced on Kaua’i, sparing not only the obnoxious chickens but also the indigenous and non-indigenous songbird population of the Garden Island.
So what does all this biospheric history have to do with the title of this blog? Well, our pals, Ron and Nancy McVean, in the process of owning the timeshare that we are staying at, are occasionally required to sit through meetings and sales pitches from the nice folks at Marriott. One of the characters they’ve met up with during these meetings is a guy by the name of Dicky Chen. I think I’ve got the name right. He’ll likely correct me if I’m wrong. Anyway, Dicky is one of those fast talking, gregarious salesmen who, when white folks wander onto Kaua’i and fall in love with the place, can spot their lustful desire for a piece of paradise a mile away. He’s good at what he does, putting tourists and locals together to make deals. He’s also a pretty good source for local legends, history, and stories. One tidbit of Kaua’i lore he shared with the McVeans got us all hooked on the mini-adventure that’s the source of this story.
“If you show up at the old county buildings around six o’clock in the evening,” Dicky confided to a group of tourists he was driving to dinner, “you’ll see the parrots of Kaua’i coming in to roost on the big royal palm trees in front of the courthouse. It’s quite a sight.”
I was, I’ll admit, dubious that Dicky was being straight with us. I had the feeling we were being set up for the Kauaian equivalent of a snipe hunt. Sure, just like snipe are a real bird, there are, in some corners of the world, wild parrots. But here? Come on. But my wife and the McVeans were convinced of Dicky’s veracity. And so, last night, we got into our rental Nissan and drove the five minutes to the county courthouse to wait for the splendid return of the roosting parrots.
Ron waiting for parrots.
Rene’ waiting for parrots.
Rene’ brought with her the very expensive (I told the story elsewhere) Samsung digital camera I bought her for Christmas. She was armed with a telephoto lens that couldn’t help but capture the bright, brilliant green hue of the promised tropical birds as they thundered into the treetops surrounding the public square. We were there well before dusk. There were no other bird watchers around. Cars and trucks sped by on Lihue’s main street without so much as a sideways glance. The locals were likely immune to the legend of the parrots and the only birds in the square were a couple of noisy roosters, some sparrows of unknown lineage, and a few cooing mourning doves (also introduced and not native to the island).
“We’ve been had,” I kept saying to Ron as we sat on the front steps of the courthouse, scanning the empty sky. “Dicky is laughing his ass off.”
Nancy and Rene’ sat in the car, waiting the birds. Ron shook his head.
“Dicky’s pretty straight. I think they’ll be here.”
“Chickens don’t count. Doves don’t count. I’ll give Dicky his due if parrots, or parakeets, or pheasants show up.”
“What about peacocks?” Ron asked. “They start with a “p” too.”
“If a flock of peacocks shows up, I’ll give Dicky his due.”
But despite the banter, I continued to disagree. I was convinced we were on a Kauaian snipe hunt of epic proportions. I could imagine Dicky Chen, at the next owners’ meeting spotting my friends, looking up from his notes, smiling, and asking the McVeans how they liked the parrots.
And then a damn lime green parrot showed up. Never having seen a parrot in the wild, I didn’t know what to make of the first bird until more parrots glided through the darkening sky and landed in the the palms.
“They’re here!”
Rene’ climbed out of the car armed with her $900 camera, ready to snap photos of exotic birds. Nancy carried her iPad, hoping to snap a picture or two with the only camera the McVeans with them. Someone, I won’t say who, forgot their real camera back in the room. I had my iPhone on me, not much use given that the zoom on an iPhone 4 isn’t very accurate. We were all relying on Rene’ and her Samsung to come through for us.
The birds started to whirl and dash into the square in flocks of a dozen or more. There was still enough daylight left to capture the iridescent greens of the little birds against the blue black sky if my wife hurried, unlimbered her camera, and shot fast.
“My camera’s dead.”
Rene’ stood there with a hunk of plastic, glass, and inert battery, and watched helplessly as waves of little green birds swirled and dove and landed. I withheld comment and took some photos with my phone. Crappy photos, like the one below, in which the elusive parrots of Kaua’i appear as small black smudges against the night sky.
The nearly invisible parrots of Lihue.
I also managed to turn my camera’s video function on. Unintentionally. I ended up with an 18 second video of: birds crying and swooping (about five seconds worth) and thirteen seconds of me discovering my iPhone was in video mode, had eaten up the last of my storage, and that my phone, like my wife’s camera, was very much useless for taking any more pictures.
“We’re coming back tomorrow night,” Rene’ vowed as we watched the little green birds settle in the palms. “I’m gonna charge my camera and we’re coming back.”
No one disagreed.
My faith in Kauaians was fully restored, though, in the end, Dicky’s information was, as I suspected, not entirely accurate. The birds that captivated our attention last night were not parrots. They are not indigenous birds. They are feral rose-ringed parakeets (see http://www.kauaibirds.com/introducedbirds.htm). Here’s what they look like if you have a camera with a functioning battery and zoom.
Rene’ will have to wait until tonight to see if she can take a picture as detailed as the one above!
Thanks, Dicky for an interesting evening, one that very few haole get to experience.
Aloha.
Mark
