Today our participant was scheduled for 10 a.m. so we mostly got things ready to head out, and then left around 9:30 to get to her house. She has an impressively landscaped property and is extremely knowledgeable about the coqui. She owns to plots of equal size, the one with her house, and the one with unmanaged forest, so we have 8 total sample plots on her property, which takes a while. She also likes to chat, and is fun to talk with. We head out around 1:30 or so, but realize we need to head back to our property from Saturday to get the flying insect traps and flags. We thank the owner again and are on our way back to our house.
I put the leaf litter insects in the extraction funnels on the porch, and we eat a late lunch around 3. I work on organizing data, while Seth starts on his third book. The coqui are all around us....
I made a cake for Seth last night, so it would be cool and I could frost it this morning. We have cake for breakfast. Seth poses with the rusty machete for his b-day pic.
I unloaded unnecessary gear from the car, put some flea prevention meds on the dog, and waited for Seth to finish on the computer. We headed out around 9:30 or so and brought the garbage to drop off, and water bottles to fill up. We decided to head out to Volcanoes National Park for the day.
Due to recent eruptions on my birthday- March 19th, the crater rim drive was closed, which was too bad. I got to take that road in February when I was here, though there was volcanic activity then, as well, which meant there were high levels of sulphur dioxide in the air, so you couldn't stop along the drive and needed to keep windows closed. We stopped and walked along devastation trail and along a steam vent area:
We also drove out along the Chain of Craters road. This road used to go all the way through to the southeastern part of the island, but was covered over with lava in a recent flow, so no more road.
There is a trail out to the end of the road, where you can walk along the lava, and can see steam coming up from the current lava flow a distance away.
Eventually we want to head down to see the current lava flow, both in the day and at night. It sounds like the area is pretty well regulated by the county, which is good and bad. One negative is that you need to get there before 8 p.m. to see it, which doesn't jive well with our current frog schedule. I'm sure we'll have another night off eventually, so we should be able to go and see the flow.
We have the Hawaii revealed guidebook (a great resource since it's written by locals), and we had chosen a fun local pizza/sandwich place to grab a quick dinner/lunch, but it wasn't open when we arrived, as we were a little early for dinner, so we headed back towards Pahoa and went to a Mexican joint that was written up in the book. The food was okay, but we were so hungry, and were in a hurry to get back to do frog counting, that we ate fast. They have pitchers of margarita that sound like fun, but not the best on a work night...
Frog counting went slower than the first property, since there were less around, but there were more sites on her property to survey, so we didn't get done until later in the evening.
Not a bad way to spend your birthday!
I decided to take care of the bug extractions this morning so I could get the funnels ready for the next batch of leaf litter from the participant today. I somehow tripped while I was in the porch and really hurt my toe (nice and purple, red, swollen and blue), but also gashed up my wrist pretty well. Good thing we have a first aid kit! First real injury of the trip, other than scratches from being in the forested areas.
Lew left some gear at the 2nd participant's house, so we headed back there to pick it up before our third participant. On the way, our rear view mirror popped off... it was easily fixable, but is a testament to how fast Seth likes to take the bumps on some of these roads... what a goof. Our third participant was at 11 a.m. We spoke with him the first day we put out the fliers, and he talked about eliminating the frogs by mowing his lawn at night. I was a little concerned he wouldn't remember the time, since he didn't pick it like other participants had. He was there, and was quite talkative. He was the first person born on the islands that I had talked with. We spent a few hours on his property and then headed into Hilo to return the library books Seth has finished, and to pick up bug traps that I ordered online and had sent there. We also stopped by the post office to pick up mail, and mail a cord back to my advisor.
I read more about different techniques for sampling densities on elusive species, but didn't have enough time to come to a conclusion about different techniques to try.
Seth and I headed to the property while Lew continued transcribing. We got to the property and I realized that I had left some of the sound equipment back at the house, which is 20 min away- 1 way. So... we decided that we would try to do two properties the next night, since we're hoping to work up to that anyways, this gives us an idea about its feasibility, and doesn't detract from the quality of the data.
We arrived back at the house and decided to have some pineapple passion fruit wine down by the ocean to celebrate our anniversary. On the way out to the picnic table, I spotted a cane toad, which Seth eliminated with a log. Cane toads are pretty nasty invasives (especially in Florida ad Australia), so he was doing a service. Hawaiian wine in Hawaiian coffee mugs.... just our style. I also made a giant checklist of items needed to be taken with us each day, since I was previously doing just a mental checklist. Seth saw the length of the list and realized that it might take us all day to just check the list... so we'll see if it helps any.
Our first participant was scheduled for 4 p.m., but we needed to pick up some gear from the last house prior to the interviewing. I spent the day collecting bugs from the extraction funnels, making sure all of the gear was ready and in the car (yay checklist!) and working on selecting speakers for this ecology center committee I am participating in this year. The day went fast and it was fairly muggy and hot around here, so I felt kind of gross from all the running around I had done by the time we left around 3:20.
Our participant today was really chatty. He doesn't mind the frogs, but his wife does. He has cinder all around the property in order to keep bugs and frogs out of the house, which seems to work quite well. We didn't hear or see any frogs in the managed parts of his yard. His wife made cookies for us, which was really sweet, and really appreciated, since we still had another property to go to. We finished our daytime measurements and went over to the second property to set up the sound recorders. We then went back to the first property and started our frog counting.
I decided that we should try a different technique tonight for counting frogs. Instead of standing in one spot and trying to count how many frogs we see and hear, and their distances (a common distance methodology), we moved along lines/transects and again recorded their distance from us if we saw or heard them. This seemed to work a lot better, though it's not the most fun to be walking through some of this really dense vegetation. We didn't see any frogs on the first property, though we heard lots in the dense ferns. At the second property, we saw quite a few non-calling frogs, which is exciting, as these guys had been more elusive than the calling frogs. I even saw a tiny juvenile, about the size of my thumbnail. Pretty cool! We got back around 10:45 p.m. or so, and I worked on setting up the bug extractions and downloading some of the sound data from my instruments while the men went to sleep.
Our first participant is not until 4:30 p.m. today, so we mostly hang out around the house getting things done. I spent some time on the computer responding to emails and getting this webpage up and running, while the men read their books. I downloaded the veg crop and understory density pictures and worked on organizing data. I was expecting a conference call in the afternoon before heading to our participant, but that ended up not happening. It is amazing, to me, how fast some of the days go here, even when you feel like you aren't getting much accomplished. Lew worked on transcribing the interview from yesterday.
As it turned out, this participant had to run off to her daughter's school concert, so we were able to do the daytime measures, and the frog counting at night, but have to come back tomorrow to talk to her. It works out fine, since our participant on Saturday is scheduled for 1 p.m. and then we need to pick up the insect traps on the property from yesterday around 4, so we can chat with the woman then.
No frogs on this property, though we could hear them all along the edges of the property, which is where more of the brush was. Will be interesting to hear what the woman has to say tomorrow
Another gorgeous day in Hawaii. The washer repairman came around 11:30 and was still here when Seth and I headed out around 12:40 p.m. He fixed the washer, yay! Sounds like the fridge has a broken starter for the condenser, which could signal a larger problem with the condenser. Hopefully it will be fixed in the not too distant future, though because it is out of warranty, it would make more sense to have a local repair person (since he drove all the way from Hawi to do the warranty service on the washer.
Today was the first day we had a participant not show up at their scheduled time, but all was not lost, since it was early in the day. Seth and I drove around and scheduled one more person for Monday, and then found a participant ready to chat with us immediately. She had one patch of unmanaged area on the land, which had some pukas (holes) so we had to be careful. I went down in one a ways, but was fine.
This participant's husband was Puerto Rican, so I was curious what he would think of the frogs. Sounds like he doesn't like them either, though he was born in Hawaii, so his parents (if they were still around) would be more interesting to chat with about their opinions. This is because the frogs are really highly regarded in their native Puerto Rico, to the point where the frog is a national symbol. Stark contrast with here where people want to destroy them. This woman brought up the possibility of instituting a "coqui tax" or something along those lines (not in so many words), since she felt that the county just doesn't have enough money to control the frogs, and it's really the people that complain. We both doubt it would fly, but you never know.
This participant was having a party at night, so she didn't want us doing frog counts that night. We're going to come back Monday to count her frogs. Since we essentially had the night off, we decided to drive out to the current lava flow and check it out. Last car needs to get there by 8 p.m. so we had to rush a bit, but we got there around 7:20 p.m. so no real problem. The area is well managed by the county, and the workers are all people that live in the neighborhood, so that was interesting. One person went over the roped off area to start exploring, but he was yelled at by one of the workers after a bit of a standoff. Another worker came and chatted with us, and I asked how close she had been to the lava flows. She said that in '86 on Thanksgiving eve, she watched her parents' house go under. They rebuilt in a neighboring community, but, wow- imagine watching that!
The moon was really gorgeous, so we have a picture of an old flow from 1991 out to the ocean, and then the other pictures are of the lava itself. We were a bit of a distance away, but you could definitely see the lava coming up, which was pretty cool. Seth wants to head back to the other side of the lava flow (where we were at the end of the Chain of Craters road in Volcanoes NP), since the park is open 24hrs/day and you can walk out as far as you want. That will require more time, since it is a bit further of a drive, but hopefully we'll get to do that at some point in the future.
Today our first appointment wasn't until 6:00 p.m., but we wanted to use the day to drive to the next community to try and recruit participants. We left here around 1:00 p.m. so we could head to the local farmer's market on the way. I got pineapple, tomatoes, bok choy, bananas, peas, and carrots- yum.
We headed to the next community, which is smaller than the first one, and started to drive through. We noticed that a great majority of the properties had keep out, no trespassing, beware of dog, or other people deterrents, which was a pretty good indicator that this community liked its privacy. The yards are larger and seem to be further set back from the road. We pressed on and tried to get the 6 or 7 participants we needed. I had quite the scare at one of the early properties we visited. I could see someone working in the shop area of the house, so I yelled hello a few times. I thought the person heard me, so I continued to approach. As it turns out, the guy did NOT hear me, he jumped, had some oil in his hand that he spilled, and turned and looked at me like he would have seriously injured me with his eyes if he could have. His dog came charging at me, but I was lucky the dog didn't bite. The guy swore a number of times, said I can't be sneaking up on people, though I told him I yelled and thought he heard. He said I was lucky I wasn't messed up from the dog, and that I need to be careful. I explained that his community seems less friendly than the last, but we're still only going on properties that don't have any of the nasty signs up (wonder if he'll buy some now....). Long scary story short, he works for a company cutting down trees for people that don't like the coqui. He said that people will make him cut down an entire tree, even if there's just one coqui. He was frustrated with that, but didn't want to participate in the study, most likely because of our rough encounter.
I was pretty shaken after this encounter, and felt like I was much more cautious about going up to people's doors afterwards. We managed to find 6 properties, that had people out, or seemed friendly, and the people were all quite nice. It took the rest of the afternoon to get the participants lined up, though, so was quite time consuming.
We went to our 6 p.m. participant who used to live in this other community. She said she wouldn't even wave at neighbors there, and she related it back to the whole forceful event of making HI into a state, so there is a lot of resentment towards mainlanders (which she is). She talked about her frustration with the superferry and efforts for invasive species in general. She left for a bit to pick up her daughter, who really wanted to help with frog counting. I told her what we'd be doing, and said I could show her after we finished. We ended up seeing a few frogs on this property, and I was able to take one of the juveniles up to show the daughter. She wanted to told the frog, and, after she handed it back to me, I thought for sure the frog was dead, since it was completely frozen in a sitting posture. I told them I'd put the frog back where I found it, and, wouldn't you know, it moved a little when it got on the leaf. Still not expecting it to be alive, I tried poking at it to make sure the initial movement wasn't just an involuntary response. It wasn't, it moved several times across the leaf. We headed out and back to our beach house.