Seabirds at Olosega Point

Last week of December, 2015.

It's been raining for days. We haven't been able to conduct our last banding station of the month, which perches on the southeast ridge of Olosega and is only reachable by a slick hike up a crumbling cliff. But Bobby and I are starting to get cabin fever, so at the first hint of slacking rain, we decide to go scout the trail, make sure it still exists, and that we remember the net lanes we set up over a month ago. Halfway up, it starts pouring again, but we soldier on and check things out anyway. The trails are decent, though the nets are weirdly placed and I become aware of how much we've learned about setting up a banding station since then. The way down is a little more treacherous, as any seasoned hiker should expect, its harder to keep your balance on sliding earth as you stare past your feet at certain death hundreds of feet below.

We round the corner overlooking the point, a dragon's tail of towering basalt cliffs that curls out from the southeast tip of the island. The view beyond is nothing but a sheet of steel grey stretching from sky to shore, engulfing the hunched silhouette of Ta'u eight miles southeast. It looks more like Scotland than 14 degrees south of the equator. As if knitted out of the cloud wool, graceful shapes materialize above us. First a frigatebird; lazily drifting through the howling wind, its crossbow wings appearing to contort and curl with each new degree of perspective. Then brown and red-footed boobies, unfazed by the storm's rage, loft and lean into air currents with the enviable ease of seasoned surfers, sometimes whooshing by our heads, staring down their huge bills at us, before being sucked back into the grayness. The only hues rebelling against the monotone are the waves, glowing glacier-blue as they pile and jostle into form from the gunmetal swell, then explode against the basalt tower with rumbling force, shattering into whitewater that shudders and boils its way to the rocky shore.

Suddenly a cacophony erupts in the air in front of us – two aptly named Blue-gray Noddies, barely larger than robins, are shrieking and tap-dancing on the wind as it races up the cliff face. Then they tuck their dagger wings and dive down toward the section of shoreline hidden far below our feet. Seabirds are amazingly adapted to this steel gray world of the ocean at its fury-est. They live for the weather that sends us ducking for cover, searching for safe harbor, craving clam chowder. I watch a pair of Brown Noddies sheer along the crest of a curling wave, zip effortlessly up as it crashes, and shimmy the salt spray from their tails, while a frigatebird calmly reaches its face back toward its foot, to attend an itch in midair. A Brown Booby eyes a tastey morsel beneath the roiling surface, folds its wings back origami-style, and drops like a torpedo into the swell. It rises back into the air with a few easy flaps of its enormous wings.

Beyond, I suddenly notice a white wall blotting out the southern horizon and marching straight towards us. My instinct is to run for the truck, but I am mesmerized by this god-sized curtain advancing quietly over the roar of the surf. Within moments, the view of Ofu to the west is obliterated by white. The curtain gathers its folds around the point until we can see raindrops slanting against the black cliffs. Then it hits us. Instantly drenched, soaked to the bone, what's left of my vision blurred by splattered glasses. We hold our ground, chests out to the ocean, shirts glued to wet skin, grinning. That rejuvenating moment when you realize its summer and rain doesn't kill you, so you jump in a puddle, raise your face to the heavens, and let it pool in your smile lines, sensing the moment with your whole body like a child.

But then the wind smacks us out of our reverie, sending rare goosebumps up our sleeveless arms, launching more and more water at the cliffs below and above us, as if furious at our lack of terror. We bumble down the slick trail, still beaming, absentmindedly slicing at the vines with our machetes, dreaming of seabirds. Those bad-ass motherfuckers. We strip down to our underwear before getting in the truck, to the dismay of the modest constituents of Olosega town, who are out walking and playing cricket and volleyball in the rain as we drive through.

When we get back to Ofu, we are informed by Scott, the NPS super, that the great white curtain is actually a hurricane, passing just south of Ta'u as we speak. Cyclones have been devastating to these islands in the past – Hurricane Olaf hit the north side of Olosega just ten years ago, destroying an entire village that now, crumbling and abandoned, is being taken back by jungle. We set up a banding station there, our trails cross through the windows of now-roofless houses and past laser-embossed granite headstones tossed aside broken graves, everything carpeted with moss and choked by thick vines like a set from Indiana Jones. But Scott doesn't seem to have an apocalyptic attitude about this hurricane. He's mostly worried that his plane won't leave tomorrow. Looks like we won't be banding for a few more days.

Banyan Tree

First part of the climb is up a wobbling staircase of giant volcanic boulders that threaten to roll out from under our feet or crush our ankles into pulp. Clutching these boulders and very much holding the cliffside together is an enormous Banyan tree – also known as Strangler Fig for its habit of using other trees as scaffolding, sending roots down the trunk and branches up over its host's until the original tree is no longer recognizable. This particular specimen comprises several enveloped trunks leaning out over the cliff slope at a precarious angle, but has sent down support roots like an organic, overly-enthusiastic suspension bridge cable. Some of these cables braid into and down the muscular trunks like sinew, porpoising as convenient handles for hoisting oneself upward, but not as helpful coming down. Bobby, having done the climb just a few days before, takes the lead as I carefully follow, hand-over-hand.

I am sitting in my own piss. I was so excited about climbing this monster that I forgot I wanted to unload at the base. Suddenly aware of my urgency, I try to aim through a hole in the braided branches, without looking at the forest floor 70 feet below, but don't quite hit the bulls-eye. Then I look up, and realize that climbing further is a little more treacherous than I am ready for, and the place I just peed is actually the most secure spot to hunker down. Resigned, I try to move a foot to the right, resting only my left thigh on the damp trunk and my right thigh on the spongy root-ball of a dead epiphyte. Surprisingly comfortable, except that the possibility of this clump of dirt suddenly losing its mortal grip on the trunk, launching me into a backward somersault to my death, sort of keeps me from relaxing.

KEE! KEE! KEE! KEE! KEE! A Collared Kingfisher calls triumphantly from the canopy. I hesitantly loosen my white-knuckle grip on the trunk and raise my binoculars. Looking up at its chin, I can see the bird's chest heaving with each gasp between yelps. This is awesome. A honey-eater darts past, and a starling whistles. The sun is briefly blotted out by the silhouette of a giant bat. Then, my eyes zero in on leaves shaking 30 feet ahead of me. It's our quarry, the Many-Colored Fruit Dove!

A graceful ball of lime green, white, and magenta feathers, it hops along the branches like an arboreal Easter bunny, picking at tiny fruits with its gentle dove bill. According to the Samoan biologists, Many-coloreds are particularly fond of banyan fruits, and this tree apparently serves a buffet to a whole congregation of them, as my eyes quickly adjust to this new perspective and begin picking out more and more individuals among the canopy. Despite their flamboyant costumes, they are amazingly well camouflaged and can disappear behind a leaf, then emerge many branches over. They tiptoe along impossibly small twigs and slide strip-pole-style down dangling vines. Watching their aptitude, I am aware of my inescapable loyalty to gravity, which seems to be pulling harder on my body now than it ever does on terra firma.

I shake off my jitters and pull myself up the last few meters to a massive horizontal branch where Bobby has been perching. It's more precarious than my pee spot, but the view is much better without the trunk obstructing the dove-dappled outer limbs. Beyond, I can see the top fronds of beach-side coconut palms and a steel blue horizon. A swift breeze rushes through leaves around me, conjuring my treasured last days of the Mid-Atlantic summers where I grew up, when autumn winds are just starting to blow the sweltering humidity back to the ocean from whence it came, whispering of much-anticipated amber hues and crisp nights by a campfire. Meanwhile, the roar of the Pacific breaking on the near-shore reef shelf is a constant reminder of where I am now – on the sweaty forehead of an ancient volcano in the middle of the greatest expanse of water on our planet. Water that is heating up, killing coral and causing more intense cyclones that devastate both villages and old growth forests on these tropical oases. How many eons have these colorful doves frolicked among figs on this tiny dot of land? How many years will they continue? I notice a resplendent male dozing at the end of my perch, aloof to the havoc we humans are causing, and amazingly unperturbed by the sight of two of us high above the ground, infiltrating the realm reserved for winged creatures. I feel a jealous pang for his ignorance, send silent thanks to them for graciously tolerating our clumsy presence, then start the slippery slide back down to where my feet are happily tethered.

Mt. Tumutumu

The rain, which had been gently commingling with sweat in my damp t-shirt all day, suddenly obliterated sight and hearing in heavy sheets. We were taking a break at the top of Tumutumu, Ofu's pinnacle, and this was the signal to start heading back down the slippery jungle two-track. I decided to finally pull out my thrift-store rain jacket, which stuck to my wet arms as I tried to drag it around my already sopping body. Day three of our so-far unsuccessful recon mission to find the elusive Shy Ground Dove was coming up short. This small brown dove is declining across its Polynesian range, and, amongst the main islands of American Samoa, has been detected incidentally only on Ofu-Olosega by biologists and locals a handful of times in the past decade. Each new fact-hazy anecdote we are told strangely adds doubt, rather than hope to our search and in turn, my suspicion takes on tall-tale proportions as well (...maybe everyone has been mistaking other species for it, maybe none of the local biologists are that great of birders after all, maybe the specimens from historical collections were mislabeled...). One of the main purposes of our banding project here is to gather much-needed natural history information about this species before it goes extinct on American Samoa, unless it already has. We are all trying not to think about that possibility.

“If they're out here,” Bobby says hopefully, “we will find them.” He's probably right. No one has made a concerted effort to be outside every morning observing birds on these twin islands in many years. There is still hope. A flash of wings darts past my peripheral vision – could it be? Excitedly pulling foggy binos to my eyes, I see not a dove, but Pacific Golden Plover uncharacteristically riding the wind like the White-rumped Swiftlets cruising openings in the canopy above our heads. Seems weird to see a shorebird at 500m, but I've stopped having expectations about anything in this place. I wipe rain out of my eyes and continue after our field party, two Samoan naturalists and a bat biologist who are probably halfway down and already making plans for tonight's barbecue.

The hike, besides painfully reminding me of the existence of my glutius maximus, was illuminating in other ways. Bobby and I saw two new species – plump, sweet-singing Polynesian Starling in the canopy, and a pair of of courting Samoan Shrikebills chattering like wrens in the undergrowth. We scouted promising locations for a banding station, and took in breathtaking views of the coastline and Ofu's famous canine-teeth cliffs from a windy overlook. The footpath to the overlook was flanked by orchids, epiphites, gigantic ferns towering above our heads like relics from the Jurassic era, and a rocky cave with a geo-cachers bucket of treasure hidden inside.

I was leading the lagging half of our party that consisted of birders – me, Bobby and Kim – when suddenly I heard the soft trill of wings erupt near my right ear. Looking up, I saw a vase-shaped clump of organic matter covered in moss and perched on the crown of a scraggly sapling. I tried in vain to peer in the top of the clump, mumbling excitedly about a possible nest. Bobby, deft and practical, pulled out his phone and reached up to take a picture – revealing two speckled eggs! We backed up the trail to wait and see what expectant parent would return. The moment we settled into a crouch behind some dripping branches we heard the voices of our companions coming back down the trail from the overlook, threatening to thwart our patience. Kim ran ahead to intercept them, and only a few moments later, two chattering birds chased each other past the sapling, and one snuck up to the nest and settled down, its head and tail poking out the top of the mossy vase – a Samoan Shrikebill! It seemed endearingly naive to our presence, even as Bobby crept closer to take a photo. It sat still long enough for the others to approach and for me to make a decent little field sketch in my rite-in-the-rain. Kim said it was the first Shrikebill nest she'd seen in her two years here.

Not suspecting to top this moment of the hike, we continued to the overlook. After peeking into the cave and using a rope to scale the last slick slope, we popped out of the jungle onto a small grassy platform that seemed to perch impossibly on the edge of a drop straight down to the shore. White-tailed Tropicbirds floated above the glimmering turquoise coral reef and an ominous gray cloud perched on the peak of Olosega like a Russian fur hat. The wind nearly blew us all to our deaths and we basked in the surreal beauty of the twin emerald islands before us, made all the more sublime by curtains of sooty fog and approaching rain.

Sili

Eight hours. Lurching into the dark, a rusting mini-tanker called M.V.Sili carries passengers and cargo to Ofu. Consciousness comes and goes like the waves crashing over the railing, soaking Bobby and me, then sloshing across the floor, boxes and shoes swirling around underneath the steel bench where I attempt to sleep, cushioned by a few chipping layers of paint. Everything saran-wrapped or else. Large palettes hydroplaning. Unlatched metal gates swinging open and clanging shut. Deafening chug and choking odor of diesel engine. I get up to have a look, stumbling to my feet, slipping on wet and gyroscoping floor. Grasp for the railing, look out into blackness pierced only a few meters by floodlight. Through stinging raindrops I see swells so big they seem almost to swallow the boat and spit it back out with each pass. I bumble back to my bench, curl up as tight as I can, and wait. Am I asleep? How did Polynesians do it in canoes?

The darkness gives way ever so slightly to cloudy steel gray. I head for the bow. Seasickness, miraculously avoided until now, creeps into my belly. A hunk of land growing on the horizon. Noddies look as tiny and fragile as butterflies flitting between the swells. Boobies careening. Dolphins surfacing beneath the bow. A palm-studded cove invites us to dock. Tinny sounds of K-Ci and Jojo's All My Life beam from a teenager's pocket. Unrecognizable dawn chorus, tempered by rooster cries, wafts down from a looming slope. Home for the next 4 months.

Rain

The rain doesn't pour in American Samoa, it pummels. The roar is deafening, like an army of HVAC exhaust units, the percussion of billions of heavy raindrops hitting billions of thick, leathery leaves, not to mention rooftops, cars, roads, trash cans, piles of detritus, puddles turning into ponds, and of course, the ocean. Even indoors with the windows shut, you have to converse in decibels usually reserved for busy sports bars on game night. You can hear the deluge approaching well before feeling a single drop. Being fourteen degrees south of the Equator, there is no proper summer or winter here, only a rainy season from November to May, and a slightly less rainy season May-October. Clouds are a near-constant, amazingly unpredictable aspect to the scenery here, billowing up the steep cliffs as if birthed from salt spray, gathering in ominous bouquets then just as suddenly evaporating, marching along the horizon like celestial tankers, or reflecting a psychedelic palette with hues that mix and splatter as the sun sets into the ocean. A black cloud usually squats over each island's highest ridge, threatening though not always delivering. But when it does, it really really does. Luckily, the deluge rarely lasts long, sometimes a few minutes, sometimes a few days. Sometimes it's pouring on your house while your neighbor enjoys sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it doesn't even rain all day. But the sheer force at which clouds can throw water on these islands is why annual rainfall for the territory can average two to three hundred inches per year.

Welcome to American Samoa

“What's the latest gossip?” I ask my crew leader, Kim Kayano, biologist for the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources of American Samoa. She's heard that we might be able to load supplies onto the Sili tomorrow and depart on it the next day. We've heard this rumor, or some version of it, about seven times in the past week, since arriving on Tutuila, American Samoa's main island. The Sili is a mysterious boat that brings semi-weekly supplies and travelers to the people living on the outlying Manua islands of Ta'u and Ofu-Olosega. The Sili has been in “dry dock” for repairs for over a month, and right as it was getting ready to dip its belly back into harbor, the local power company decided to charter the entire boat for their own purposes, with various promises to bring us, or our supplies, or just one truck and one human and no supplies, with them to Manua. We, meaning myself and my partner, Bobby Wilcox, are here on contract with Institute of Bird Populations to conduct a bird banding survey on Ofu-Olosega through the end of March. With the Sili's current reputation, we can't really afford to travel there without the stockpile of food we bought at Cost-U-Less that we hope will carry us through the very real potential of no resupply until we return in late March. We have learned quickly that frustration is futile; the only reasonable reaction is to laugh and say “sounds perfect.” After all, this particular Limbo offers ocean views and decent snorkeling, how can we complain? Not to mention, we are staying with a bat biologist who is currently taking care of two little orphans that enjoy papaya and belly rubs, and practice flying around their aviary (batiary?) at dusk. At least once a day, I think someone has thrown a basketball at the house, then I realize it was a falling coconut. There are certainly worse places to be indefinitely detained.

American Samoa is situated approximately halfway between Hawai'i and New Zealand, which is to say it's in the middle of effing nowhere on the big blue side of the Earth, along with a smattering of hundreds of other volcanic sneezes with high proportions of vowels in their names. The only flights to American Samoa launch from Honolulu or Apia, Samoa - what used to be called less ambiguously Western Samoa, the independent half of this 9-island archipelago, which also happens to be a significantly more important tourist destination, for infrastructural reasons that are becoming all too obvious. Heading southwest from Honolulu International Airport, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself a minority on the tin can that lofted us nearly to the date line – most people traveling to American Samoa are American Samoan. The main reason for this, and the lack of tourism, is that ninety percent of land here is communally owned by indigenous family dynasties and it is illegal to transfer ownership to anyone less than half-Samoan. How they managed to maintain this traditional system after becoming a US territory in 1900 is impressive and commendable, or close-minded and an obstacle to development, depending on who you ask. The National Park of American Samoa, part of the US National Park system, actually leases land in 50-year increments directly from its family owners, allowing subsistence agriculture and fishing within its boundaries. Bobby and I have yet to make it over to the area of the Park north of Pago Pago, partly for lack of transport but especially for fear that we may miss the fateful call that the Sili is loading for departure!