Mike in the Wild

No fish epitomizes snorkeling on Hawaii's reefs more than the reef triggerfish.  Both tenacious and colorful, it's an easily recognizable sea dweller that every swimmer and explorer encounters within moments of entering the surf and shallows.  It's also the official state fish of the Aloha State, with a Hawaiian name sometimes acknowledged as the longest word in the language.  Even if actually not so, the word is indeed longer than the fish! The family of fish is called humuhumu  in Hawaiian, and the reef triggerfish is specifically the humuhumunukunukuapua'a .  It's a fun word to learn to say, an easy act when you break it down into its simple and repeated parts:  hoo - moo - hoo - moo, noo - koo - noo - koo,  ah - poo - ah - ah .  It literally means, "triggerfish with a nose like a pig." The triggerfish is called as such because it can erect and lock its dorsal spine to hold itself tightly in a rocky crevice as a means of protection.  I...

When you think of Maui in Hawaii, what comes to mind are beaches, luaus, surfboards, Mai Tai's and all the many tourists enjoying them.  But there is a world of native wildlife teaming just past the shore line in the surf, the reefs and deeper.  It only takes a snorkel and a pair of fins to explore the exotic animals that thrive there, and an inexpensive underwater camera to preserve their images for future posts on "Mike in the Wild."  Here are a few snapshots as an introduction to what lies ahead! Green sea turtle. Green sea turtle, close-up. Reef triggerfish or humuhumunukunukuapua'a, Hawaii's state fish. Star-eye parrotfish with Christmas wrasse who seems to follow, eating scraped debris that the bigger fish trails. Black triggerfish. Bluespine unicornfish. It was unusual to see a specimen like this one with his 'horn' extending beyond his mouth. Whitemouth moray eel in coral. Endangered Hawaiian monk seal on the ...

A trip to Hawaii is a joy to the senses.  The sights, sounds and smells are some of the most beautiful and exotic in the world.  The rugged and verdant landscapes, nurtured by gentle, tropical trade winds and rains, have been home to native Hawaiian people for over fifteen hundred years.  But it didn't take long for these early Polynesian settlers to begin altering the ancient Eden they discovered.  In fact, they may have been responsible for the extinction of more than half of the island chain's native birds, especially the flightless varieties.  Starting with the arrival of  Captain Cook and the first Europeans in the 1700's, many new animals and practices were introduced that led to the rapid demise of even more of the original wildlife. As a result, visiting Hawaii's beautiful beaches and coastlines doesn't guarantee an encounter with pristine native fauna that a trip to Costa Rica or the Canadian woodlands might.   Most surviving endemic birds h...

A couple of weeks ago, I was struck by the kaleidoscope of colorful birds in Watson Woods in Prescott.  So when I returned this past weekend, I was anticipating one more look at an exotic menagerie of grosbeaks and tanagers.  While I quickly saw the brilliant yellow of a male Bullock's oriole, I was initially disappointed when I didn't find the same birds as last time. Male Bullock's oriole. There was a difference with this visit versus my last one, as I opted to enter the woods from the south in order to explore the 2/3 of the parkland I hadn't yet seen.  The groves of trees were not as dense, and there were more open fields of plants and wildflowers than I had seen a short distance to the north.   Violet green swallows were more prevalent in this open space, soaring and darting in twisting arcs above and around me. Violet green swallow taking a break. Bumblebee and wildflower in the fields at Watson Woods. Not too long into my walk, I followed th...

Spotting a cardinal in the wild is always an exciting and colorful moment.  Many people call it the prettiest bird in the United States, and the fact that seven of our states call the red avian their state bird probably makes that official.  In fact, this popular species that is really called the northern cardinal to be exact, is just one of many in a quite colorful family of - technically speaking -  cardinalidae . Traditionally, there were just a few birds in this taxonomic family.   But recently, science has determined through genetics that a number of grosbeaks, tanagers and buntings also belong in this classification.  It turns out that an older method of categorizing birds by their sizes, colors, and beak shapes didn't stand up to modern molecular analysis. So even though all the members of this expanded family of birds don't have the same shaped bill, the males are almost always brilliantly colored.   And their beaks are all strong enough to eat...