Nene eggs begin to hatch

8.00 am. Loud deep purrings and songlike murmurings were coming from inside the hau, even before the nest was visible. Something was inspiring these new vocalizations from the female nene. She was sat as usual over the eggs, fussing a little with the sides of the nest, a feather here, a piece of grass there, then for a moment she stood up to look at them and two of the eggs had small holes in them, - one was about the size of a dime, but in a cracked, uneven way - and there were little cheeping sounds coming from within. A beak appeared momentarily outside, and then back inside again. The other hole was a little smaller, and had softer cheeps coming from inside, and a glimpse of soft downy gray movement within. These were the sounds that inspired the mother's response. She lowered herself over the eggs again, her feet either side, and continued her contented purring. It can take up to two days for a Canada goose gosling to open the egg and free itself, chipping away from inside. For some reason, there are only three eggs now. On Christmas Eve she was behaving very similarly, and I noticed an egg missing, but did not see or hear a gosling.
The male arrived about an hour ago with the second female. They were focused on each other and were mating yesterday for at least the second time. He demonstrated in front of her by stretching his head and tail, erect in the air, and then sidestepping towards her with head and neck lowered. In a short while, after feeding on grass, he walked towards the nest and she continued to graze.
It was on the 27th November that the original pair spent the first night apart. The female was constructing her nest in the hau, the male on guard by the river. Nene incubation is said to take between 29 and 31 days. She probably spent a few days preparing the nest and laying before beginning incubation.

11.00 am. The male is aware of the hatching and has begun to change his behavior. For the last two weeks he has been almost inseparable from the unbanded female we call Nahe nahe. In Hawaiian it means small and gentle, and she is a small bird, one of two sisters that were born up river last year. A lot of the time they grazed in the field or flew upriver, occasionally absent for half of the day, giving no response to his first mate’s call, to watch the nest as she fed. This morning he has been standing alone at the edge of the hau, and did not followed Nahe as usual, even when she called to him, he remained in sight of the nest. He does not chase her away, though the nesting female hisses at her if she gets too close, but he does chase the occasional rooster.
The nesting bird has adopted a different position, with wings spread more to her sides. Her whole body moves as if nudged from underneath. At one point she stood up and there was the first clear silhouette of a gray gosling, with a long thin neck swaying from side to side as it tried to stand for the first time. This video was taken about an hour later.

The nesting bird lowers herself very tentatively, probably feeling where the tiny gosling is with her feet and legs. At one point the gosling was beside the large leg band and she would not have been able to feel its movements. There were still two eggs remaining, and she has turned the other one with the hole in it. The rain is loud but the sound of the gosling's voice is just audible beneath that of the mother. There are bouts of activity between periods of rest and each time she raises herself she rotates a little more in the nest.

Four eggs!

Underneath the hau was mud and sodden cow poop, which oozed between my toes and flip-flops, and clouds of large biting flies seemed to rise out of the slime wherever I stepped and gathered around me. There was a scattering of fresh fallen yellow flowers. Overhead, a large family of mejiros , a small, green, nectar-eating bird introduced from Japan, chirped in unison as they followed each other from blossom to blossom.
I was trying to get a photograph, feeling the incubation may be nearly complete. There was hardly any light, and I was just about to leave, - very quickly, as the flies were feasting on me - when she stood up beside the nest, revealing four perfect white eggs. She began to cover them with a light covering of loose feathers from the side of the nest and finished with a big fresh fallen leaf. At the edge of the hau she ate a little, but there was no sign of the male. After only two or three minutes she headed back, stretching and flapping her wings in the last open space before she entered. She watched a procession of roosters climbing over fallen branches beside a patch of rushes at the edge of the river 30feet away, then she returned to the nest. Without removing the thin coverings, she lowered herself over the eggs, with her feet on the edge of the bowl. The outside of the bowl appeared to be newly covered with fallen leaves, after yesterday’s soaking.

Hanalei, Dec 14 2008: Nesting female nene leaves her nest, revealing four eggs, which she carefully covers before leaving for a short feed.

Saving the nest from flooding

The hau at the edge of the swollen river

It’s been raining for two days and nights now, and red dirt is snaking into Hanalei bay from the swollen rivers. Overhead, the clouds drift in from the Pacific in thick layers and settle over the mountains. Thin, wispy, animalistic shapes are carried across the dark bases, slowly merging into solid masses. Thunder rumbles overhead and a young female nene looks up with her head on one side, and decides to move from beneath the coconut tree in the middle of the valley, where she had settled. She calls to her mate, a contact call with some urgency to it, and he follows her deeper into the valley, on foot. Normally they would have flown but all the geese prefer not to fly when it is wet or windy. The dominant male, from the nesting pair, has a new position on a silver-gray trunk of a fallen wili wili tree, where he has a view of the places on which the two other nene pairs have been focusing. He is about 100 feet from the nest, in “penguin form”. It’s a name I made up to describe the elongated stance a nene takes in heavy rain. The rain runs down their necks and bodies in rivulets, and they all seem to enjoy it. I never see them seek shelter like most other birds.
Underneath the hau it was sheltered and dark, but great quantities of the yellow blossom had been washed off the upper branches by the rain and scattered across the carpet of blackened leaves. The nest has been growing in size every day, getting wider, and taller as she has continued tucking more leaves around herself. She lay relaxed on top of it, wings merging into the down-and-leaf blanket, and on the edge, beside her wing, a perfect yellow hau flower rested, lotus like.

The following day……Saturday
The storm has continued overnight, the bridge into Hanalei is closed by water over the road, and the fields where people normally park for the two farmers' markets are lakes, with endangered koloa ducks splashing in them.
Lightning flashes, followed by thunder crashes a couple of seconds later, continued through the night into a very dark dawn. We didn’t get to see the full moon at all, the largest of the year, which was set to rise on the horizon at sunset last night.
By about 8.00am there was enough light to check on the nest. We could see from the window that the pasture was a network of lakes, and one of them disappeared beneath the hau beside the nest. It was bad. Standing water was everywhere, by instinctive choice her nest was one of the few patches still visible, but water was all around the edges and looked as if it was touching the eggs. She looked up at us, with no fear, no hiss, I don’t want to put my thoughts into what she was thinking, but she looked dejected and soggy. The ground around her, which had been solid last night, had changed within hours to a lake. It seemed hopeless, with hundreds of feet of standing water around, and rain still falling like a tropical monsoon. The best chance was to make it drain faster. Luckily Bill was back from the mainland, and while thunder continued overhead he began to dig a narrow trench from the river towards the main area where the water was gathering. At one point he had to saw through hau roots, four inches thick, only three feet away from the nest. Talking to her as he did it, he succeeded without spooking her. At last the water started to drain, an ooze that became a bubbling stream, draining just enough - as long as the river doesn’t rise. It took two and a half hours, partly because of the restricted spaces in which he was working; little cavities in a tangle of ancient hau. When we left her the nest now seemed to be about three inches above the water, and she began to preen, a good sign - she hadn’t been moving, she had been too still, a bundle of wet feathers.
The rain is forecast to continue until Thursday, we should get some sand bags ready.

Part of the drainage channel after it began to flow. One of the roots that had to be cut is near the center.

This whole area was under water, right up the walls of the nest, and in places even touching the nene - which you can see just above the center of this picture. The area clear of leaves shows how close to the nest the main drainage channel had to be dug.


After Storms, Cleanup In Kauai
Assessments Under Way As Area Seeks Federal Help

WAIMEA, Hawaii - Cleanup has begun in several counties after a severe storm pounded Kauai. The Civil Air Patrol conducted an aerial assessment of the island on Sunday to determine if Kauai will qualify for federal assistance.
A bulldozer worked alongside residents to clear the muddy mess in Waimea Town, one of the hardest hit areas on Kauai.
Raging flood waters washed away cars and disturbed piles of abandoned vehicles, which ended up on top of each other, in the mud, and in the river.
"The thing was 1 foot into my kitchen," said Kauai resident Glenn Kapahu. "It lifted up my deck. This is about the worst I've seen in this valley. And I've been here for over 20 years – 30 years."

From KITV, Hawaii Dec. 14 2008