The friendly neighborhood ʻaukuʻu
On Friday I had left my car at Sears to get some work done. It poured at lunch, but by pau hana time the skies had cleared enough that I didn’t get wet as I walked through Ala Moana Park on the way back from my office. The drainage canal inside the park was chocolate-brown with silty runoff.
The winds had torn a few branches off trees in the park.
In the distance I noticed a shape hunched over at the side of the drainage canal. It was too big to be a dove… and that posture looked familiar…
Sure enough, it was an ʻaukuʻu (a.k.a. a black-crowned night heron)! It was busy looking for fish in the murky water below, and paid me little notice as I approached. It cocked an eye at me but ignored me so long as I kept my distance and didn’t come closer than eight or ten feet.
I love it that wild birds like this are still comfortable in the middle of the city.
(This post retroactively inserted on 4/7/06 because I was too lazy to write it up last week.)