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.