'Ua'u chick with downy feathers exiting the nesting burrow at the 9,800 -foot elevation on Haleakalā, Maui. - Photo: Courtesy of Haleakalā National Park

Spotlight on: Hawaiian petrel

By Lisa Asato / Ka Wai Ola Loa

Hawai'i made national news when word spread that it would become the first state to switch to digital TV a month ahead of the rest of the country in order to respect the nesting season of an endangered native bird. The early Jan. 15 switchover was planned months in advance to accommodate the Hawaiian petrel, whose population on the slopes of Maui's Haleakalā would have been nesting around the time the demolition of old analog facilities were taking place. Here, KWOL takes a closer look at Hawai'i's little-known, little-seen and only endangered seafaring bird.

If you don't spend much time at sea, the black and white Hawaiian petrel might not be a familiar sight. "During the day they're just like fisherman – they go out to sea early in the morning and they come back late at night," says Cathleen Natividad Bailey, wildlife biologist at Haleakalā National Park. It's when they return to their nesting grounds at night that their chirp can be heard. "They make the call, 'oooh-ahh-oooh-oooh,' ... and then they go, 'yak, yak, yak, yak, yak.' "

"It's kind of eerie if you don't now what it is."

Named 'ua'u in Hawaiian, a name which echoes the sound of its chirp, the Hawaiian petrel was considered sacred to Hawaiians, and its chicks were considered a delicacy reserved for Hawaiian royalty, Bailey says.

'Ua'u fledgling that was picked up at Kahului Harbor after falling to the ground. 'Ua'u use stars to navigate and are often confused by urban lights when trying to fly out to sea to feed. They circle the lights, become tired and fall to the ground. - Photo: Courtesy of Haleakalā National Park

Like other seafaring birds, the 'ua'u helped in navigation. It once had a thriving population "from sea level up to the highest elevations on the mountains on all the main islands," she says. "But they now occur only at the mountaintops on Kaua'i, Hawai'i, a small population on Lāna'i and Moloka'i, and Haleakalā, of course."

In the 1960s, there were only 15 known nests at Haleakalā. "Now there's over a thousand. Remarkable recovery," she says, attributing it largely to the National Park Service's work to control the populations of feral goats and pigs, which cave in the birds' mountainside burrows, as well as controlling populations of its predators: mongoose, cats and rats.

A successful release of an 'ua'u that became grounded. - Photo: Courtesy of Haleakalā National Park

The petrel, which Bailey describes as a similar in size to a "skinny, skinny chicken" with a huge 3-foot wingspan, spends November to mid-February out to sea, returning to land to nest during the remaining months of the year. "Unlike chickens or geese ... these birds only lay one egg a year, and if that egg fails they wait till the next year to lay. So it's very critical that they lay that one egg, and raise it and fledge it. meaning the bird grows up and leaves," Bailey said.

Although she says the state's digital conversion may well have gone on as planned had it been a matter of health and safety or national emergency, she applauds the National Association of Broadcasters and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for working to hasten the digital conversion to avoid any disturbance of the petrel's nesting season.

Bailey noted that birds are part of some families' genealogy. And the 'ua'u may be no exception, she says. Its cousin, the Newell's shearwater, or 'a'o, is in her husband's family's genealogy and is recalled in their chants that speak about how the 'a'o "represents the birth of their family ... and how the family is preserved."