Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
mainland relatives, they have slightly fuzzier heads than the North
American raven we are more familiar with. Their eyes snap with
intelligence, their brains boosted by sophisticated nervous systems that
govern many basic motor functions leaving their brains free for thought
and memory.
They make 140+ different sounds each with their own meaning. On the
one cold rainy November day a year they allow the public in the birds
showed off a large number of these calls fluffing and chattered away at
the small group that had come to visit them. Our guide explained that
they were curious about us and that rare visits like this were
stimulating to the birds. The guide pleasantly awkward in her spiel - she
didnt have the tourist savvy, paid to smile mannerism that people
working in the visitor industry acquire here. Its clear this tour was not
part of an attraction, and indeed according to Michelle Smith a senior
staff at the Center it wont ever be one either, since some of the birds
need the seclusion to breed.
The Aala is extinct in the wild and was down to only 14 individuals in
the 1990s. Much of the Centers work is in breeding the birds to get the
population back up. Thats a lot harder than it sounds. The birds have
to be carefully hand fed while chicks so as not to imprint them on their
human caretakers. The Centers Director Bryce Masuda explains that
they use puppets to feed the chicks after their eyes open and this
simulates a parent for the hatchlings. The puppets are awkward things,
black sleeves with wooden raven heads, and metal attachments. They
look like extras in the Muppets Show. But these caretakers can never let
the objects of their affection know them, the attachment they feel to each
new chick can only ever be one way. Its necessary if they are ever to
return to the wild. Somehow that makes the whole enterprise more
wistfully brave. It occurs to me that it is exactly the kind of sacrifice St.
Francis would appreciate, and I think it is emblematic of the kind of
sacrifice all of us will have to make in order to manage the mass
extinction we are passing through.
state deserves one it is the Maui Bird Conservation Center. But maybe
there should also be a direct appeal a kickstarter campaign, or something
like that. Not everyone feels that extinction of Hawaiis endemic
species is the original ecological sin of humans in paradise, but there
might be enough who do to get these beautiful birds back into the free
and open sky of Hawaii.
In order to have the best chance to make it in the wild the birds cannot
be too old because after a few years they lose the curiosity and edge that
lets them thrive in the wild. Michelle Smith one of the senior staff at
the Center stands in the rain in front of the cages. Smith says, the ideal
would be one breeding pair per enclosure, but with Sequestration,
her hand stabs out at the pens. Looking up through the rain there are at
least 4 birds with their heads all cocked at different angles all looking
through their screen at the receding tour group. Do these birds dream
about flying through an open limitless sky? Do they regret that their one
and only time to be alive will pass behind double screened windows?
One Aala stares back at me eyes glittering like the obsidian of Peles
tears. I cannot guess at his thoughts.
Video about the crows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TXY9pnEg7M&feature=related