4:00 a.m. we're leaving Logan and on our way to Kona, HI!
2:00 p.m. (HST= 6:00 p.m. MDT) we land in Kona, HI and we rent a car to drive across the island to Pahoa, where we will be staying for the next 2 months. We finally arrive at the oceanfront property around 9 p.m HST, which equals 21 hours of travel! We orient to the house, and the stray dog, who we greet with a biscuit that Patricia, the landlord, had on top of the refrigerator, and we head to some much needed sleep
Gotta love Hawaii... no matter how little sleep you've had, you still wake up bright and early... namely 6 a.m.... after first waking up at 2, then 3, then 4... guess we're still on UT time.
We realize our cellphones don't really work at the house, but the internet works fine. We head into Hilo to go to the field station to pick up supplies for our fieldwork, check out the library, and head to the stores for additional supplies.
This house is awesome! Check out some of these views of the house:
We see our first coqui at 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon- as it hops on Seth off of the car when we return to the beach house. Did it just like Seth, or did it know we were here to do research on it? Or, maybe I shouldn't anthropomorphize frogs... hmm. At any rate, I was able to show a coqui to Seth and we took some pictures:
We ate our dinner on the picnic table by the ocean and headed to sleep early (around 9), still recovering from some lag and not sleeping well the night prior.
The coqui really seem to be confused, as I heard them calling around 8 this morning, and have heard them again periodically during the afternoon. It has been nice and warm and moist for them, though, so I guess it makes sense that they call. Plus, they will call during the day for territorial reasons, so it could just be that's what we're hearing.
The day went past quickly, as I'm sure most will while we are here. Seth has been reading away as he knows his time will become more limited, starting tomorrow, and Friday for sure, since we need to start collecting data. I spent the day entering in citations for a journal article I'm working on with my advisor on the coqui, and tested some supplies, and looked up about ordering more. Seth also decided to work on his tan while sitting outside on the picnic table reading, which turned into a nice burn- ouch!
We picked up Lew, my other field assistant, from the Hilo airport at 10 p.m., after stopping by the grocery store first. It is about a half hour drive from Pahoa where we're staying to the Hilo airport.
Lew's bag was left at the airport, since it didn't make the transfer with him, so Seth had to drive him back to Hilo to get it. He also picked up some supplies we needed while in town. I spent the time working on selecting neighborhoods to survey, and thinking further through methodology.
Late in the day I briefly went through research techniques with Lew and Seth, but then it started to rain, so we went inside (which won't be happening in the future). We drove around one of the communities we are going to be sampling last night, and listened for coqui frogs. They seemed to be all over... no surprise there anymore. We then spent an hour or so outside in the backyard of this property looking for coqui, and realized that it's not that easy to see them, though some of us got better as the night went on. We spent a couple hours doing this, and came in after some of the batteries were dying in the headlamps.
I got some good pictures of calling males:
Today I refined selection criteria for the communities we are sampling, so we could drive around and place doortags about my research on randomly selected properties. We drove back to the community we went to last night, and hung 10 door tags introducing my study and requesting a timeslot with the person to interview them. I talked to a couple of the people briefly as I handed them the door tag, and one of them was really funny. He told me how he used to have potted plants next to his house, but all of the coquis moved in, so he moved the vegetation away from the house, but then the coqui moved into his open garage area, so he decided to go out at night and use his lawn mower... you can use your imagination from there, but I hope he has plenty more to share on Wed when we'll be talking to him.
During the day I had us run through a trial run on a portion of this large property we are staying at. I had us determine our pace length, and then map out the property features. We randomly selected points on the property to survey vegetation. This consists of taking flying insect samples, ground insect samples, assessing understory density using a checkerboard pattern, and assessing canopy cover. Pictures of the 1 x 1 m grid used to assess vegetation, and the checkerboard used to assess understory density are pictured below:
In the evening we again tried spotting frogs both by listening for them, and just by searching for them with a good light and some patience. We felt better than yesterday, but still not that great with our skills. Karen, one of my advisors, says we will be experts in 3 months.... but that's a ways away.
p>We drove back to the houses we hung doortags on, only to find that none were placed back outside in a way that indicated they were interested in participating. Some might not have been seen, and others were kept inside, making us assume they read it and didn't want to participate. Time to regroup and re-strategize...We decided to again randomly select properties, but this time, since it was Saturday, we decided to knock/ring the bell and see if anyone answered so that way we could explain what we were doing, and track down a specific time to meet with them, so we wouldn't have to be driving back to pick up more door tags. This worked great! We booked 8 participants and we headed back to our place around dinner.
I finally went out exploring along the coastline for a little break in the day. Seth took me out to a point where he had seen sea turtles the other day, and, sure enough, we saw three of them!
We again tried counting frogs, since our first participant is Sunday. The strength of the light appears to be important. The males look so neat when they are calling.
Our first participant is scheduled for 1 p.m. so I spend the morning getting things organized and ready for the big event.
We arrive at the property and the man we spoke with was sleeping, but his wife agreed to talk to us, so that worked out well. She was fairly short-winded, so the interview only lasted about 10 minutes. We took our vegetation measures and headed home for dinner after picking up supplies on the way back.
We went back around 7 p.m. (around sunset) and set up to record frog densities and dB levels of the frogs. We mostly heard the yippy maltese/shitzu dog barking, so the frogs were quiet in comparison. We learned a few things about ways to collect better data (such as putting stakes out at the 4 cardinal directions to help determine where quadrants are), but it still was a successful first attempt.