Quite literally, might I say. But first, a quick recap.
Literally the day after I told my parents that we hadn't managed to acquire some sort of pet here, we were adopted by a cat. He's actually been hanging around for about a month now, and would occasionally come and meow at the door, looking for handouts, which earned him the nickname "beggar cat". But he'd always been skittish, and was rarely reliably around, until that day when he decided he was okay with me petting him, rather than bolting if I so much as took a single step in his direction. Since he was hungry enough to be affectionate, I couldn't help but feel bad for him, and went out and bought some cat food. Within days, he was comfortable coming inside the house to eat and hang out, though anyone who wasn't me or Dan made him exceptionally nervous for a while. He's still getting over his fear of us, but now tends to sleep in the garage on top of our mist nets, and has been renamed Julius.
Food exploration continues here as well, as usual. It's incredible how many restaurants this island can support. I have to assume that they all are busy at dinner, because typically when Dan and I arrive for lunch, we're the only people in the restaurant besides the staff, with the two exceptions being the Taste of India buffet (decent, but made me miss Swagat even more) and lunch at FoodTalk, a brand new Filipino cafe that, for $3, will send you to a table with an entree, rice, and soup. I had chicken afritada, which is going to have to become something I will cook for some of you at home if you've never had it - essentially a stew of chicken, potatoes, and bell peppers, but the sauce is one of the few things I've ever eaten that is tomato-based that I actually liked. And then there is the always-popular Thursday Night Street Market, which I haven't been going to lately because I've usually had plenty of food around the house, but I went last night and got two steamed bao, a pile of Cantonese-style bok choy, a cup of ginataang halo-halo and a couple of puto for $3.25 - can't beat that! (And looking for vegetables for one of our vegetarian friends was pretty amusing - she walks up to a Filipino stand with some sort of stir-fried vegetable mix and asks if there's meat in it, and the response was "no meat, just pork!" We laughed. That's pretty standard Filipino food right there, pork in every dish.)
Beyond restaurants, there are always new local fruits and vegetables to try. Taro leaf and coconut soup is remarkably similar in taste to stuffed grape leaves - delicious! Starfruit here are so much more flavorful than they are on the mainland, and my new favorite local fruit is chico, also known as sapodilla, a round brown kiwi-sized fruit with the texture of a ripe bartlett pear but a flavor more like brown sugar. Our garden is always coming up with new surprises as well, and hopefully the banana plants will fruit soon.
Now, onto the main purpose of this post (besides being a general update, which I know I haven't done much of lately). There is a fantastic blog called Saipan Pictures, which is quite simply that, a collection of photos from all over the island, run by Eric Johnson, a local teacher who came to Saipan 14 years ago. The most intriguing page to me has always been Caves in Saipan, because there is only one marked cave here and that is Kalabera Cave, which is pretty neat but not particularly interesting beyond the 40-some foot ladder down into the darkness. Beyond that, you can't go anywhere, as the cave continues only as a vertical pit that requires some serious climbing gear to get into. So seeing the guy's photos had always been tantalizing, as I really wanted to go to some of those incredible places but had no idea where to find them. So I emailed him about them and asked if I could get directions to a few.
Quite coincidentally, the caves I had chosen to ask about were ones that he was planning on visiting with his family just that next day, and he invited us to come along. Being that we simply couldn't pass up that opportunity, we met up with Eric, his sister Jing, and his daughter Ting, at Last Command Post. They all piled into our truck, which has better clearance than his car, and he directed us to a site near the landfill where old bombs from the war are collected. Every few months, apparently, the bomb management crew blows up all of the old artillery shells and grenades and whatever else is found, and spectators are welcome to watch from the overlook at Suicide Cliff.
Just off the road to the bomb facility is a small winding trail that leads to several large limestone caves. Two, Beehive Cave and Honeycomb Cave, are right next to each other - Beehive looking like a fairly standard downward-sloping hole, whereas Honeycomb is a barely visible gap between the rocks that must be squeezed into.
We entered Beehive Cave first. Just like all of the other limestone here, the cave floor was extremely slick where it was damp, which was most places. Unlike any cave I've been in before, though, the inside of this cave (and Honeycomb as well) was hot, and completely still. At the bottom of Beehive, Eric estimated that we had gone down at least two hundred feet, which put us well below sea level, which probably accounts for the lack of air movement. The initial passageway is relatively narrow, but there are a series of slightly broader chambers, and eventually the cave opens up into a terminal large room. Like all caves here, this one is still littered with artifacts from Japanese soldiers during World War II, including cans and sake bottles and the soles of some old shoes.
Honeycomb is a very different cave, despite being right next to Beehive. It consists of several long passages, many of which are still unexplored. We didn't make it very far in, as while we were waiting for Eric to check out one tunnel to see if it was worth going down, he began to suffer from heatstroke - that's how bad these caves can get - so we all backed out and sat down and had some lunch instead. Apparently he's gone as far as an hour in, as has another caver here, but the difficulty then becomes managing not just the heatstroke but also the lack of oxygen that deep, as no air movement means it replenishes very slowly. However, even that far into the cave, he has found artifacts, meaning the soldiers who were there during the war had explored quite some distance themselves.
Japanese soldiers lived in these and other caves and hidden bunkers for up to sixteen months at the end of the war. Some of them died when American soldiers came through looking for survivors and the Japanese dared to peek out and see who was coming, but most of the rest died when the American strategy changed to using flamethrowers at the mouths of the caves, eating up all the oxygen within. The jungles of the northern end of the island are still full of reminders of the war to this day - old fragments of ceramics, Navy ammo bunkers, and even the occasional skeleton.
The rainy season here is beginning to make banding something of a challenge. Today marks the second occasion on which extensive rain and stormy weather meant we had to close our nets before we had a minimum number of hours in, meaning that we have to go back and finish up tomorrow. While closing nets, I had a brief conversation with a couple of tangantangan cutters who we've met before - and there is a job I do not envy, chopping down the spindly little trees to make trellises. It went a little like this:
"Caught in a shower, huh?" He was wearing a bright yellow poncho, and looked quite cheerful.
"Yeah, it's a little wet today." I, on the other hand, was lacking a poncho, and was soaked through.
"Any birds?"
"Just one. The weather's too bad to keep banding."
"Oh. Pretty rainy, will probably rain all day! At least not a typhoon."
Which made me laugh a little. "Yeah, that would be a problem."
"Typhoon? Nah, typhoon, no problem. I've got a worse problem," he says, grinning, and points to the truck that's piled high with tangantangan.
But hey, at least he seemed cheerful enough. Banding here is definitely different from banding in the Oregon coast range, though. There, Aaron and I were miles and miles from anyone else. Here, we have visitors ranging from local farmers and tangantangan harvesters, to lost hikers, to Korean tourists on their off-road monster truck adventures. It's a totally different atmosphere, that's for sure. I think I liked the feeling of being far from civilization better, but having such a variety of people around means there's always something interesting going on here.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Rain, rain, go away
The rainy season is officially upon us here in Saipan. Today has been gray and rainy all day, following this morning's thunderstorm, and today is in fact the first day in which we've had to close our banding site due to rain before we could get the required minimum of hours in, meaning we'll have to go back and finish up that site tomorrow. This is why we have a ten-day week with a four day weekend - we don't always get all four days off if the weather forces us to leave early on a banding day. I suspect there will be weeks in which we don't get any days off at all as the season progresses.
Things have been damper in general in the past couple weeks, leading to a very slight rebound in birds. We're still not catching very many, except at our busiest site where we have caught 20 birds the last two times we were there. I suspect it's the busiest because it is on the edge of two different habitats - half of the station is non-native tangantangan, the other half is native rainforest, and often, edges and boundaries and the like are highly diverse regions due to the variety of ecological niches to be exploited. Not just because there are two different habitats instead of one, but because the border itself becomes a prime area for generalist species to take advantage of a variety of food sources, as well as being a region of opportunities and fierce competition for plants. (You may not think of plants as fierce, but they are - time-lapse photography, among other techniques, shows us the fascinating war these plants wage on each other in a time scale we can appreciate.)
Bird Island, meanwhile, is busy enough for us to catch a variety of species, but simultaneously slow enough for me to take some good photos. So have a look at a Rufous Fantail, showing off their namesake; the same fantail being weighed (because really, how could I resist that photo?), and an adult male Micronesian Honeyeater, far more vibrant than the juveniles I've been posting photos of up until now.
For the first time in weeks, Dan and I had four days completely off at the end of our banding period, as we managed to finish our vegetation transects during the previous break. This meant we had time to do something in the morning, for once, and so we took the opportunity to take the ferry out to Managaha Island, the tiny coral islet on the edge of Garapan Lagoon where we previously banded nesting wedge-tailed shearwaters.
It was a bit of a wet day, but nothing we weren't prepared for, so while the tourists all ran down the dock and huddled under the nearest shelter, Dan and I headed off to the other side of the island to stake out a covered picnic table for ourselves on the relatively empty side. We spent the day walking around taking photos, snorkeling in the impressive coral reef that surrounds the island, and being chased by its many fish, which are accustomed to snorkelers providing handouts of cooked rice, which I was happy to provide for them. Even if some of them are best seen at a distance only - triggerfish and others have painful dorsal spines, parrotfish have hard coral-crunching beaks that are just as good at crunching fingers, and needlefish have pointy faces which pose little danger to snorkelers, but are actually the source of more injuries to canoers than are sharks, as needlefish are related to flying fish and have a tendency to jump out of the water and accidentally spear unsuspecting boaters.
The true danger at Managaha during the wet season, though, are Charybdea jellyfish, close relatives of the deadly box jellyfish. Jellyfish blooms can't really be predicted but tend to occur during rainy periods, and for this reason, snorkeling was kept to a minimum. I myself was stung on the arm and then on the ankles when I turned around and took off in the other direction. The danger of these jellyfish, like the more painful box jellies, lies not only in their potent venom but also in the likelihood of said venom triggering anaphylactic shock, which results in drownings as the actual cause of death. Given that, I made sure to stick close to shore, and I'm glad I did as each subsequent time I went out into the water I saw at least one jellyfish. The trouble with these, too, is that the "bell" is fist-sized and translucent and easily lost among the other underwater sights, while their four tentacles trail almost invisibly behind them and can be up to three feet long. Hopefully next time we go out there, there won't be a jellyfish problem, but if it looks like a regular thing, I may have to get some protective swimming gear like we used in Australia.
Snorkeling within the shallower waters around Saipan is far less troublesome, although there isn't as much to see. But that doesn't mean the water is empty. After the disappointment that was the jellyfish-infested reef around Managaha, I snorkeled inside the reef by Bird Island the next day. The coral may not have been as impressive, but I saw quite the collection of fish and other unusual sea life. At low tide, several black-tipped reef sharks (small, harmless, and pretty cool) made their way inside the reef, where they swam back and forth in classic dorsal fin above water style, darting after fish that had been trapped in the shallow water. Farther out from the beach, I found schools of butterflyfish and angelfish, picassofish and parrotfish and the wonderfully-named humuhumunukunukuapua'a, a two-foot eel of some species or other, a lemon-yellow pufferfish the size of my hand and a black and blue-spotted one that was much smaller, and two giant clams sunk into the floor of the old reef, which closed up as I waved a hand over them. I wish I had some sort of reef fish identification guide, but I haven't been able to find one yet, unfortunately. Still, some of the more remarkable species, such as the juvenile emperor angelfish and the bicolored parrotfish, I'm usually able to remember enough about to look up on the internet later.
Before I go make lunch (apparently my Mexican-style champurrado, or chocolate rice pudding, wasn't filling enough), a few small things.
One, this may give you a better idea of what Garapan looks like from the street, rather than from a distance. In photos taken from far away, the hotels stand out the most, but the town itself is an array of dingy half-abandoned (and sometimes entirely abandoned) buildings, covered in signs sporting as many languages at once as the designers could cram in. It's a little bit like a pan-Asian ghost town in some places. Very strange, and makes for some very interesting wandering.
And then two, we had an earthquake yesterday! Earthquakes are quite common here apparently, but we've now had two within a week, as there was another on July 4th that was a little bit too far away to feel easily. This one was closer, though, and a 5.5, enough to knock a couple of things off a nearby table and shove my chair around a bit. This is likely related to the geological activity in the trench that caused the volcano to erupt a couple weeks ago. Thankfully, for all of the 8-10 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or greater that hit Saipan every year, not a one ever seems to trigger a tsunami - they all occur too far underwater and with not enough force, and I don't doubt that there are other factors as well. I wouldn't be surprised if we have another earthquake soon and possibly another eruption some time this summer, but we shall see.
Things have been damper in general in the past couple weeks, leading to a very slight rebound in birds. We're still not catching very many, except at our busiest site where we have caught 20 birds the last two times we were there. I suspect it's the busiest because it is on the edge of two different habitats - half of the station is non-native tangantangan, the other half is native rainforest, and often, edges and boundaries and the like are highly diverse regions due to the variety of ecological niches to be exploited. Not just because there are two different habitats instead of one, but because the border itself becomes a prime area for generalist species to take advantage of a variety of food sources, as well as being a region of opportunities and fierce competition for plants. (You may not think of plants as fierce, but they are - time-lapse photography, among other techniques, shows us the fascinating war these plants wage on each other in a time scale we can appreciate.)
Bird Island, meanwhile, is busy enough for us to catch a variety of species, but simultaneously slow enough for me to take some good photos. So have a look at a Rufous Fantail, showing off their namesake; the same fantail being weighed (because really, how could I resist that photo?), and an adult male Micronesian Honeyeater, far more vibrant than the juveniles I've been posting photos of up until now.
For the first time in weeks, Dan and I had four days completely off at the end of our banding period, as we managed to finish our vegetation transects during the previous break. This meant we had time to do something in the morning, for once, and so we took the opportunity to take the ferry out to Managaha Island, the tiny coral islet on the edge of Garapan Lagoon where we previously banded nesting wedge-tailed shearwaters.
It was a bit of a wet day, but nothing we weren't prepared for, so while the tourists all ran down the dock and huddled under the nearest shelter, Dan and I headed off to the other side of the island to stake out a covered picnic table for ourselves on the relatively empty side. We spent the day walking around taking photos, snorkeling in the impressive coral reef that surrounds the island, and being chased by its many fish, which are accustomed to snorkelers providing handouts of cooked rice, which I was happy to provide for them. Even if some of them are best seen at a distance only - triggerfish and others have painful dorsal spines, parrotfish have hard coral-crunching beaks that are just as good at crunching fingers, and needlefish have pointy faces which pose little danger to snorkelers, but are actually the source of more injuries to canoers than are sharks, as needlefish are related to flying fish and have a tendency to jump out of the water and accidentally spear unsuspecting boaters.
The true danger at Managaha during the wet season, though, are Charybdea jellyfish, close relatives of the deadly box jellyfish. Jellyfish blooms can't really be predicted but tend to occur during rainy periods, and for this reason, snorkeling was kept to a minimum. I myself was stung on the arm and then on the ankles when I turned around and took off in the other direction. The danger of these jellyfish, like the more painful box jellies, lies not only in their potent venom but also in the likelihood of said venom triggering anaphylactic shock, which results in drownings as the actual cause of death. Given that, I made sure to stick close to shore, and I'm glad I did as each subsequent time I went out into the water I saw at least one jellyfish. The trouble with these, too, is that the "bell" is fist-sized and translucent and easily lost among the other underwater sights, while their four tentacles trail almost invisibly behind them and can be up to three feet long. Hopefully next time we go out there, there won't be a jellyfish problem, but if it looks like a regular thing, I may have to get some protective swimming gear like we used in Australia.
Snorkeling within the shallower waters around Saipan is far less troublesome, although there isn't as much to see. But that doesn't mean the water is empty. After the disappointment that was the jellyfish-infested reef around Managaha, I snorkeled inside the reef by Bird Island the next day. The coral may not have been as impressive, but I saw quite the collection of fish and other unusual sea life. At low tide, several black-tipped reef sharks (small, harmless, and pretty cool) made their way inside the reef, where they swam back and forth in classic dorsal fin above water style, darting after fish that had been trapped in the shallow water. Farther out from the beach, I found schools of butterflyfish and angelfish, picassofish and parrotfish and the wonderfully-named humuhumunukunukuapua'a, a two-foot eel of some species or other, a lemon-yellow pufferfish the size of my hand and a black and blue-spotted one that was much smaller, and two giant clams sunk into the floor of the old reef, which closed up as I waved a hand over them. I wish I had some sort of reef fish identification guide, but I haven't been able to find one yet, unfortunately. Still, some of the more remarkable species, such as the juvenile emperor angelfish and the bicolored parrotfish, I'm usually able to remember enough about to look up on the internet later.
Before I go make lunch (apparently my Mexican-style champurrado, or chocolate rice pudding, wasn't filling enough), a few small things.
One, this may give you a better idea of what Garapan looks like from the street, rather than from a distance. In photos taken from far away, the hotels stand out the most, but the town itself is an array of dingy half-abandoned (and sometimes entirely abandoned) buildings, covered in signs sporting as many languages at once as the designers could cram in. It's a little bit like a pan-Asian ghost town in some places. Very strange, and makes for some very interesting wandering.
And then two, we had an earthquake yesterday! Earthquakes are quite common here apparently, but we've now had two within a week, as there was another on July 4th that was a little bit too far away to feel easily. This one was closer, though, and a 5.5, enough to knock a couple of things off a nearby table and shove my chair around a bit. This is likely related to the geological activity in the trench that caused the volcano to erupt a couple weeks ago. Thankfully, for all of the 8-10 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or greater that hit Saipan every year, not a one ever seems to trigger a tsunami - they all occur too far underwater and with not enough force, and I don't doubt that there are other factors as well. I wouldn't be surprised if we have another earthquake soon and possibly another eruption some time this summer, but we shall see.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Finally, to the top of Forbidden Island!
More on that in a second. First, some general around the island stuff: the flame trees, as mentioned before, are in full bloom, and are also dropping petals heavily. They remind me of the cherry trees we have back home in spring, except that instead of pretty white-pink petals that look like snow, the trees themselves and the ground below them are all deep red. The highest concentration of flame trees on the island is on the southern end, around the soccer fields and airport, making for a beautiful welcome upon a visitor's first arrival to the island - for the month of June, anyway. If anyone reading this has ever thought of visiting the island, come in June. It's dry (relatively), the breeze is cool, and the trees are beautiful.
I also have a couple photos of the Yellow Bittern we (sadly unsuccessfully) tried to help out last weekend. He was very cute.
Banding was slow again this week - up until the very last day, when at Laderan Tangke, we caught 20 birds! Or, I should say, I caught 20 birds. Dan caught none. He has terrible luck, evidently. Anyway, they were all Rufous Fantails and Bridled White-Eyes, so nothing terribly exciting, but it was a nice change to catch a reasonable number of birds. The reason was the storm that had come in the night before and sat on top of the island all day, keeping things cool and overcast and windy. The wind was a bit of a pain since bits of twigs and leaves and vines kept blowing into the nets, meaning every net run was almost entirely used to pick debris out of the nets as well as birds, but at least it wasn't a boring day.
So, as you probably recall, last weekend we attempted to get to Forbidden Island, but couldn't due to the water. Well, this Saturday (yesterday, for us) was a minus tide, with the afternoon low being six inches below sea level. Perfect for another try. We both stuck our flip-flops in our backpacks so as to make wading possible if we needed to, rather than getting our boots submerged in salt water and then having to hike up the island and then all the way back up in soggy, salty boots. A good decision, as it turns out, because even at low tide, there was still a couple inches of water over a few sections of the land bridge. We got our boots back on once we'd made it to the beach, because at that point, the hike was only half over - we now had to go back up to the same altitude we'd started at, but at a much steeper angle, on a very narrow trail that wound its way over sharp limestone at the bottom, and turned completely vertical by the end, accessible only because a knotted rope hung over the edge with which to pull yourself up. The hike, in pictorial format:
1. The hike starts at the top of the cliff, seen in the far upper right of this photo, and comes down a steep hillside, then an even steeper hillside, a couple sections of which are rocky walls that can either be detoured around or climbed straight down with the help of some ropes, which is actually pretty fun.
2. The land bridge (here as well as above) itself is slippery and rocky, but enjoyable as well - even in shallow water, there are interesting corals and bright blue fish, and wading feels nice, of course, when the water is always bathtub-warm.
3. Once across, some tricky boulder-hopping is required to get off of the beach, and all of those rocks are covered in razor-sharp ridges and folds, just like the coral they used to be. From there, it's straight up the side of the island on a steep, narrow path, until you pull yourself up onto the top with a rope for the last several feet.
4. Success! The view from the top, as seen in a few of the previous photos as well as this one, is pretty spectacular. And there are Brown Noddy chicks here! Unlike the Black Noddies which nest in trees, Brown Noddies don't build nests at all. Instead, they lay an egg on a bare spot on a cliff, like most other seabirds.
And now, your local food tidbit: earlier in the week, we harvested a huge bunch of saba bananas, which, like plantains, must be cooked to be eaten. Filipinos seem to regard these as the best of bananas, but for someone like myself who is far more used to the sweet Cavendish bananas, they take some getting used to. The most common preparation method is to boil or steam them in the skin, and then dip them in savory or sweet toppings, depending on what you feel like. I can eat them like that, but they still taste a little strange. Banana turon is also popular - essentially, sabas with brown sugar and sometimes other flavorings, wrapped in a lumpia wrapper (egg roll wrapper) and fried.
My current preferred method for eating sabas is either in a dessert soup like ginataang halo-halo (coconut milk, tapioca, saba, purple sweet potato, balls of sticky rice dough, and sugar) or for breakfast after slicing up very ripe sabas and boiling them in a sauce of milk, brown sugar, vanilla and cinnamon, and putting them on toast. I think I'll try baking some of them soon, though - I have an awful lot sitting on the counter right now.
We have two more days off, and then it will be back to work. Hopefully we get some good birds again soon!
I also have a couple photos of the Yellow Bittern we (sadly unsuccessfully) tried to help out last weekend. He was very cute.
Banding was slow again this week - up until the very last day, when at Laderan Tangke, we caught 20 birds! Or, I should say, I caught 20 birds. Dan caught none. He has terrible luck, evidently. Anyway, they were all Rufous Fantails and Bridled White-Eyes, so nothing terribly exciting, but it was a nice change to catch a reasonable number of birds. The reason was the storm that had come in the night before and sat on top of the island all day, keeping things cool and overcast and windy. The wind was a bit of a pain since bits of twigs and leaves and vines kept blowing into the nets, meaning every net run was almost entirely used to pick debris out of the nets as well as birds, but at least it wasn't a boring day.
So, as you probably recall, last weekend we attempted to get to Forbidden Island, but couldn't due to the water. Well, this Saturday (yesterday, for us) was a minus tide, with the afternoon low being six inches below sea level. Perfect for another try. We both stuck our flip-flops in our backpacks so as to make wading possible if we needed to, rather than getting our boots submerged in salt water and then having to hike up the island and then all the way back up in soggy, salty boots. A good decision, as it turns out, because even at low tide, there was still a couple inches of water over a few sections of the land bridge. We got our boots back on once we'd made it to the beach, because at that point, the hike was only half over - we now had to go back up to the same altitude we'd started at, but at a much steeper angle, on a very narrow trail that wound its way over sharp limestone at the bottom, and turned completely vertical by the end, accessible only because a knotted rope hung over the edge with which to pull yourself up. The hike, in pictorial format:
1. The hike starts at the top of the cliff, seen in the far upper right of this photo, and comes down a steep hillside, then an even steeper hillside, a couple sections of which are rocky walls that can either be detoured around or climbed straight down with the help of some ropes, which is actually pretty fun.
2. The land bridge (here as well as above) itself is slippery and rocky, but enjoyable as well - even in shallow water, there are interesting corals and bright blue fish, and wading feels nice, of course, when the water is always bathtub-warm.
3. Once across, some tricky boulder-hopping is required to get off of the beach, and all of those rocks are covered in razor-sharp ridges and folds, just like the coral they used to be. From there, it's straight up the side of the island on a steep, narrow path, until you pull yourself up onto the top with a rope for the last several feet.
4. Success! The view from the top, as seen in a few of the previous photos as well as this one, is pretty spectacular. And there are Brown Noddy chicks here! Unlike the Black Noddies which nest in trees, Brown Noddies don't build nests at all. Instead, they lay an egg on a bare spot on a cliff, like most other seabirds.
And now, your local food tidbit: earlier in the week, we harvested a huge bunch of saba bananas, which, like plantains, must be cooked to be eaten. Filipinos seem to regard these as the best of bananas, but for someone like myself who is far more used to the sweet Cavendish bananas, they take some getting used to. The most common preparation method is to boil or steam them in the skin, and then dip them in savory or sweet toppings, depending on what you feel like. I can eat them like that, but they still taste a little strange. Banana turon is also popular - essentially, sabas with brown sugar and sometimes other flavorings, wrapped in a lumpia wrapper (egg roll wrapper) and fried.
My current preferred method for eating sabas is either in a dessert soup like ginataang halo-halo (coconut milk, tapioca, saba, purple sweet potato, balls of sticky rice dough, and sugar) or for breakfast after slicing up very ripe sabas and boiling them in a sauce of milk, brown sugar, vanilla and cinnamon, and putting them on toast. I think I'll try baking some of them soon, though - I have an awful lot sitting on the counter right now.
We have two more days off, and then it will be back to work. Hopefully we get some good birds again soon!
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Double-fail, followed by cookery
I don't exactly have time to upload pictures right now - bedtime is in an hour and it will take me at least that long to upload and caption them - so you'll have to wait until later. In the meantime, hopefully this simple description will suffice.
As usual, our four days off went by quickly. This is largely because we are still doing vegetation transects in the mornings on our off days. Next week will be the end of it, though! I'm glad for that. What we have to do is survey the habitat at each of our banding sites by doing 50-meter transects at each net, stopping every five meters to note the canopy trees, their diameter at breast height - a standard forestry measurement defined as 1.4 meters off the ground - subcanopy, shrub, and ground coverage. Moving 50 meters through the rainforest is tricky. Having to do it ten separate times for each site is painful. Having to do it one hundred times, given that we have ten banding sites, would be utter madness, but thankfully not all of our sites are in the jungle, with all its thick vines and dense undergrowth. It still takes a very long time to do, though, and we'll be happy to have them done with.
Wednesday was dollar bread day - as is every Wednesday at Ebisuya, a fantastic Japanese bakery. I got my usual walnut rolls, and this time decided to try their donuts (dense and not overly sweet), and their "an pan French" - a French bread roll stuffed with sweet red bean filling. I might have to try and find some anko and make these myself. Dan got his usual blueberry cream cheese French roll, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Beyond that, we didn't do much Wednesday. It's always nice to take a break.
Thursday was fail-day number one, although fail was pretty much a given. We were going to hike Forbidden Island, but the two girls from the plant crew who are currently living with us brought me a juvenile Yellow Bittern, which they had picked up off the road by the airport. The bird was obviously not quite connecting with reality - he barely reacted to us at all, and was starved and extremely dehydrated. We set up a little cardboard box shelter for him in a cool area, and I gave him some gatorade - better for him than water as it contains sugar and electrolytes - but although he looked briefly more aware of his surroundings, he went downhill again after that, and died a couple of hours later. I hadn't really expected him to recover, but since they'd brought him to me, I figured I might as well give it a shot. Oh well. They named him Wallace, and hopefully the Fish and Wildlife department here will be able to send him to a natural history museum, either here or on Guam, so he can be used as a study specimen. Bitterns are common but very secretive, so I doubt that any museum here has very many of them in their collections.
Friday was fail-day number two. As caring for the bittern had pretty much taken up most of the afternoon, we decided to re-attempt the Forbidden Island hike - not just down to the beach as we did last time, but over the land bridge and up onto the island itself. Unfortunately upon reaching the beach, it was clear that even with low tide, the water just wasn't going to go quite low enough to let us cross to the island without getting pretty wet. But next Saturday there is a slight minus tide in the afternoon, so we'll give it another shot. I did find some pretty interesting shells, but as Forbidden Island is a marine conservation area, I decided leaving them in place was the best idea. Besides, I don't really need more shells, at this point.
Today, Saturday, we headed out early to hit up the Sabalu Farmer's Market down in Susupe. Saturday is the best day for the Market, undoubtedly - Tuesday is nice, and convenient for us since we don't have many Saturday mornings off but we're always available on Tuesday evenings, but Saturday has more participating farms, with a wider variety of produce. Which is excellent, as I was in a cooking mood! I got a daikon radish with a long lovely top, another kabocha squash (very similar to sugar pumpkin), two sweet potatoes, a bunch of Chinese celery (stronger flavored than European celery, with thin hollow stems - similar to wild celery), and two heads of some unidentifiable local variety of green lettuce.
I wilted the radish greens with salt and put them and some sliced daikon in white rice for lunch, which was pretty darn tasty, and then I made two loaves of French bread, and for dinner I marinated a tuna fillet in green curry and coconut milk, then steamed half in a banana leaf for a couple minutes, and pan-seared the other half as I usually would, for a comparison taste-test. And let me tell you, nothing makes tender delicious tuna like lightly steaming it in a banana leaf from the yard. That'll be how I cook most of my fish from now on, I think. I was going to make a salad with some of my new vegetables, but got full on tuna and rice, oops. So tomorrow will be a Chinese-style vegetable stew with the radish and pumpkin and celery and probably some eggplant. And I'm sure there will be salad at some point because I do have all that lettuce now.
Okay, before I go to bed (and before this turns into a cooking blog), I will say that I got a mid-sized bamboo steamer at Feng Hua Store in San Jose (San Jose, Saipan, not California - there is quite a difference) for $4. Feng Hua Store is one of several little Chinese junk shops that sell everything from clothing to kitchenware to used electronics, and a number of other miscellaneous items. I had originally intended to use the steamer to make dim sum for dinner, and asked the woman at the counter if she knew of a good Chinese grocery store on the island that would have dim sum ingredients. She thought for a moment, then turned to an older man who evidently didn't speak English at all, and they had a conversation in Cantonese for a minute or so, and then she turned back to me and said "We don't sell that here." Really? Eventually I managed to get across that I was looking for a place that did, and she kind of smiled and shrugged and said "Next building, maybe?" It turned out that yes, the next building over had a grocery store that, despite its rather generic name (San Jose Mart), was some sort of hybrid Chinese/Korean grocery store, and I did manage to find my dim sum ingredients. So now I can make Lo Mai Gai, the lotus leaf-wrapped sticky rice with chicken and shrimp and Chinese sausage inside. Only I'll use banana leaves instead, as the flavor is similar to lotus.
Okay, well, I had best get to sleep - banding resumes tomorrow, after all. Tomorrow is also Father's Day here, so happy Father's Day in advance!
Belated edit: Oh goodness, I almost forgot to mention. When I was putting away dishes after dinner, I reached for the cutting board only to find a mourning gecko on it. Mourning geckos are native, or at the very least, they've been here for a very long time, and I hadn't actually seen one yet. Rather than the dull tans and greens of the Pacific house geckos, Mourning geckos are dark brown with black and tan markings that are more reminiscent of a rattlesnake than a lizard. These geckos are parthenogenetic, meaning there are no males, only females, and the eggs they lay contain clones of the mother. Very cool!
As usual, our four days off went by quickly. This is largely because we are still doing vegetation transects in the mornings on our off days. Next week will be the end of it, though! I'm glad for that. What we have to do is survey the habitat at each of our banding sites by doing 50-meter transects at each net, stopping every five meters to note the canopy trees, their diameter at breast height - a standard forestry measurement defined as 1.4 meters off the ground - subcanopy, shrub, and ground coverage. Moving 50 meters through the rainforest is tricky. Having to do it ten separate times for each site is painful. Having to do it one hundred times, given that we have ten banding sites, would be utter madness, but thankfully not all of our sites are in the jungle, with all its thick vines and dense undergrowth. It still takes a very long time to do, though, and we'll be happy to have them done with.
Wednesday was dollar bread day - as is every Wednesday at Ebisuya, a fantastic Japanese bakery. I got my usual walnut rolls, and this time decided to try their donuts (dense and not overly sweet), and their "an pan French" - a French bread roll stuffed with sweet red bean filling. I might have to try and find some anko and make these myself. Dan got his usual blueberry cream cheese French roll, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Beyond that, we didn't do much Wednesday. It's always nice to take a break.
Thursday was fail-day number one, although fail was pretty much a given. We were going to hike Forbidden Island, but the two girls from the plant crew who are currently living with us brought me a juvenile Yellow Bittern, which they had picked up off the road by the airport. The bird was obviously not quite connecting with reality - he barely reacted to us at all, and was starved and extremely dehydrated. We set up a little cardboard box shelter for him in a cool area, and I gave him some gatorade - better for him than water as it contains sugar and electrolytes - but although he looked briefly more aware of his surroundings, he went downhill again after that, and died a couple of hours later. I hadn't really expected him to recover, but since they'd brought him to me, I figured I might as well give it a shot. Oh well. They named him Wallace, and hopefully the Fish and Wildlife department here will be able to send him to a natural history museum, either here or on Guam, so he can be used as a study specimen. Bitterns are common but very secretive, so I doubt that any museum here has very many of them in their collections.
Friday was fail-day number two. As caring for the bittern had pretty much taken up most of the afternoon, we decided to re-attempt the Forbidden Island hike - not just down to the beach as we did last time, but over the land bridge and up onto the island itself. Unfortunately upon reaching the beach, it was clear that even with low tide, the water just wasn't going to go quite low enough to let us cross to the island without getting pretty wet. But next Saturday there is a slight minus tide in the afternoon, so we'll give it another shot. I did find some pretty interesting shells, but as Forbidden Island is a marine conservation area, I decided leaving them in place was the best idea. Besides, I don't really need more shells, at this point.
Today, Saturday, we headed out early to hit up the Sabalu Farmer's Market down in Susupe. Saturday is the best day for the Market, undoubtedly - Tuesday is nice, and convenient for us since we don't have many Saturday mornings off but we're always available on Tuesday evenings, but Saturday has more participating farms, with a wider variety of produce. Which is excellent, as I was in a cooking mood! I got a daikon radish with a long lovely top, another kabocha squash (very similar to sugar pumpkin), two sweet potatoes, a bunch of Chinese celery (stronger flavored than European celery, with thin hollow stems - similar to wild celery), and two heads of some unidentifiable local variety of green lettuce.
I wilted the radish greens with salt and put them and some sliced daikon in white rice for lunch, which was pretty darn tasty, and then I made two loaves of French bread, and for dinner I marinated a tuna fillet in green curry and coconut milk, then steamed half in a banana leaf for a couple minutes, and pan-seared the other half as I usually would, for a comparison taste-test. And let me tell you, nothing makes tender delicious tuna like lightly steaming it in a banana leaf from the yard. That'll be how I cook most of my fish from now on, I think. I was going to make a salad with some of my new vegetables, but got full on tuna and rice, oops. So tomorrow will be a Chinese-style vegetable stew with the radish and pumpkin and celery and probably some eggplant. And I'm sure there will be salad at some point because I do have all that lettuce now.
Okay, before I go to bed (and before this turns into a cooking blog), I will say that I got a mid-sized bamboo steamer at Feng Hua Store in San Jose (San Jose, Saipan, not California - there is quite a difference) for $4. Feng Hua Store is one of several little Chinese junk shops that sell everything from clothing to kitchenware to used electronics, and a number of other miscellaneous items. I had originally intended to use the steamer to make dim sum for dinner, and asked the woman at the counter if she knew of a good Chinese grocery store on the island that would have dim sum ingredients. She thought for a moment, then turned to an older man who evidently didn't speak English at all, and they had a conversation in Cantonese for a minute or so, and then she turned back to me and said "We don't sell that here." Really? Eventually I managed to get across that I was looking for a place that did, and she kind of smiled and shrugged and said "Next building, maybe?" It turned out that yes, the next building over had a grocery store that, despite its rather generic name (San Jose Mart), was some sort of hybrid Chinese/Korean grocery store, and I did manage to find my dim sum ingredients. So now I can make Lo Mai Gai, the lotus leaf-wrapped sticky rice with chicken and shrimp and Chinese sausage inside. Only I'll use banana leaves instead, as the flavor is similar to lotus.
Okay, well, I had best get to sleep - banding resumes tomorrow, after all. Tomorrow is also Father's Day here, so happy Father's Day in advance!
Belated edit: Oh goodness, I almost forgot to mention. When I was putting away dishes after dinner, I reached for the cutting board only to find a mourning gecko on it. Mourning geckos are native, or at the very least, they've been here for a very long time, and I hadn't actually seen one yet. Rather than the dull tans and greens of the Pacific house geckos, Mourning geckos are dark brown with black and tan markings that are more reminiscent of a rattlesnake than a lizard. These geckos are parthenogenetic, meaning there are no males, only females, and the eggs they lay contain clones of the mother. Very cool!
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Pacific...
My goodness, how has it been three weeks since I wrote here? When you're on a ten-day week, and busy for much of it, time slips right by. Well, I can't possibly recap everything that's happened, but here are some highlights:
We went out to Managaha Island one evening with Marilyn and Randy, the archaeologists/bird rehabbers, to go check on the Wedge-tailed Shearwater colony that nests there every summer. Shearwaters are basically nocturnal duck-sized albatrosses (how cool is that?) which nest in coastal burrows. Marilyn and Randy keep track of every nest on the island, and band every bird they can that comes through simply by going through at night and picking the birds up off the ground while they congregate or pulling them out of their burrows for a few minutes. So we got to go and round up some shearwaters and band them, and I wish I could have taken photos, but crawling around in old Japanese bunkers on my belly to grab seabirds really isn't a very good situation to put my camera in. There are probably around fifty burrows on Managaha right now, though that's a rough estimate based on how much running around we did, and come August the eggs will likely have hatched, at which point we'll go back out to band the nestlings, which will be even more fun.
I know I talk a lot about the cool wildlife here on Saipan, and sometimes go into some of the plants as well, and even the history of the island (and expect a little more of that in a few paragraphs). But bear with me for a second while I talk about geology, a subject that is pretty dry for most people. The geology of Saipan is pretty remarkable, as it turns out. Saipan, like the rest of the Marianas, has a volcano at its core, but Mt. Tapochao is long-dormant. The subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the Philippine Sea Plate created the Mariana Trench, and along the western side of the rift, volcanoes such as Mt. Tapochao rose up from the sea floor, beginning around 50 million years ago and continuing until around 38 million years ago (meanwhile, the more northern islands are much younger, and some, such as the seamount just south of Sarigan, are still growing and erupting, as we all heard last week). Those volcanoes soon became hosts to a wide variety of corals, which built a reef, and then the island, reef and volcano and all, was uplifted several times over the millennia due to the same tectonic interactions that created it in the first place, eventually leaving an island made of eroded coral terraces around a volcanic core. This means there are a lot of very sharp limestone rocks here! But the landscape is pretty dramatic, and it's unusual to go up to places like the top of Suicide Cliff and know that you're standing on a section of ancient uplifted fossilized coral reef. The current reef shelf is only about a foot underwater most of the time, if that, and so I suspect someday the ridge that the islands are on will uplift again, and Saipan will nearly double in size.
A little bit of a banding update - we're catching fewer and fewer birds as the drought continues, with a maximum of 11 this week at a site that should be catching closer to 30 or 40. We've caught some rarities, though - a Mariana Fruit Dove, another one of Saipan's fine critically endangered species, rarely captured as they typically hang out in the canopy; and a Yellow Bittern, a bird that is not in and of itself rare, being found throughout the Pacific and East Asia, but typically only one is caught per year here as they usually hang out in the reeds at Lake Susupe or fly over the banding sites, but don't usually go in the forested areas our nets are in. For those of you curious about how we weigh our birds, this honeyeater will demonstrate. We weigh every bird we catch to get an idea of their condition, and to do so we place the bird in a tube, place the tube on the scale, and then subtract the weight of the tube after the bird is released.
And now it's history time. A little-publicized fact about Saipan is that from 1949 to 1962, the entire northern half of the island was blocked off for use by the CIA. The story at the time was that it was for use as a Navy training base, but in truth, the CIA turned what is now Capitol Hill into a base for monitoring communications in East Asia - Vietnam and China in particular - as well as training their espionage agents. In 1951, the CIA brought several rural Tibetans to Saipan to train them in tactics that would help fight China, and in the early 1960s, a radar station was set up on Laderan Tangke which still stands today, providing for some creepy Cold War explorations in the many abandoned buildings at the site. CIA offices and other buildings still litter the Capitol Hill region as well, and while many are occupied for use as government buildings, others remain as empty as they were in 1962 when the CIA left the islands.
All right, I have a feeling nobody will ever read all of this, but if you made it to the bottom without skimming, well done! If you've been following the island's power problems, we made it through last weekend without any outages because they were able to come up with enough money to stall the situation off, but the CNMI government now owes the utility company $1.2 million by Friday because they haven't paid the bill in four months and the utility company has run out of money to buy fuel from Mobil, and so the governor has declared a state of emergency which will supposedly allow him to reallocate funds from other areas of the budget. Apparently, the last time this happened was just last fall, so this isn't anything new for Saipan. So once again, I know last weekend was a false alarm, but I may be out of contact this coming weekend instead. Or perhaps I won't. We just don't know.
Due to the long break between updates, I have a lot of photos that haven't been linked here but which can be found at my Flickr set as usual, so go ahead and look through them when you have a moment.
We went out to Managaha Island one evening with Marilyn and Randy, the archaeologists/bird rehabbers, to go check on the Wedge-tailed Shearwater colony that nests there every summer. Shearwaters are basically nocturnal duck-sized albatrosses (how cool is that?) which nest in coastal burrows. Marilyn and Randy keep track of every nest on the island, and band every bird they can that comes through simply by going through at night and picking the birds up off the ground while they congregate or pulling them out of their burrows for a few minutes. So we got to go and round up some shearwaters and band them, and I wish I could have taken photos, but crawling around in old Japanese bunkers on my belly to grab seabirds really isn't a very good situation to put my camera in. There are probably around fifty burrows on Managaha right now, though that's a rough estimate based on how much running around we did, and come August the eggs will likely have hatched, at which point we'll go back out to band the nestlings, which will be even more fun.
I know I talk a lot about the cool wildlife here on Saipan, and sometimes go into some of the plants as well, and even the history of the island (and expect a little more of that in a few paragraphs). But bear with me for a second while I talk about geology, a subject that is pretty dry for most people. The geology of Saipan is pretty remarkable, as it turns out. Saipan, like the rest of the Marianas, has a volcano at its core, but Mt. Tapochao is long-dormant. The subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the Philippine Sea Plate created the Mariana Trench, and along the western side of the rift, volcanoes such as Mt. Tapochao rose up from the sea floor, beginning around 50 million years ago and continuing until around 38 million years ago (meanwhile, the more northern islands are much younger, and some, such as the seamount just south of Sarigan, are still growing and erupting, as we all heard last week). Those volcanoes soon became hosts to a wide variety of corals, which built a reef, and then the island, reef and volcano and all, was uplifted several times over the millennia due to the same tectonic interactions that created it in the first place, eventually leaving an island made of eroded coral terraces around a volcanic core. This means there are a lot of very sharp limestone rocks here! But the landscape is pretty dramatic, and it's unusual to go up to places like the top of Suicide Cliff and know that you're standing on a section of ancient uplifted fossilized coral reef. The current reef shelf is only about a foot underwater most of the time, if that, and so I suspect someday the ridge that the islands are on will uplift again, and Saipan will nearly double in size.
A little bit of a banding update - we're catching fewer and fewer birds as the drought continues, with a maximum of 11 this week at a site that should be catching closer to 30 or 40. We've caught some rarities, though - a Mariana Fruit Dove, another one of Saipan's fine critically endangered species, rarely captured as they typically hang out in the canopy; and a Yellow Bittern, a bird that is not in and of itself rare, being found throughout the Pacific and East Asia, but typically only one is caught per year here as they usually hang out in the reeds at Lake Susupe or fly over the banding sites, but don't usually go in the forested areas our nets are in. For those of you curious about how we weigh our birds, this honeyeater will demonstrate. We weigh every bird we catch to get an idea of their condition, and to do so we place the bird in a tube, place the tube on the scale, and then subtract the weight of the tube after the bird is released.
And now it's history time. A little-publicized fact about Saipan is that from 1949 to 1962, the entire northern half of the island was blocked off for use by the CIA. The story at the time was that it was for use as a Navy training base, but in truth, the CIA turned what is now Capitol Hill into a base for monitoring communications in East Asia - Vietnam and China in particular - as well as training their espionage agents. In 1951, the CIA brought several rural Tibetans to Saipan to train them in tactics that would help fight China, and in the early 1960s, a radar station was set up on Laderan Tangke which still stands today, providing for some creepy Cold War explorations in the many abandoned buildings at the site. CIA offices and other buildings still litter the Capitol Hill region as well, and while many are occupied for use as government buildings, others remain as empty as they were in 1962 when the CIA left the islands.
All right, I have a feeling nobody will ever read all of this, but if you made it to the bottom without skimming, well done! If you've been following the island's power problems, we made it through last weekend without any outages because they were able to come up with enough money to stall the situation off, but the CNMI government now owes the utility company $1.2 million by Friday because they haven't paid the bill in four months and the utility company has run out of money to buy fuel from Mobil, and so the governor has declared a state of emergency which will supposedly allow him to reallocate funds from other areas of the budget. Apparently, the last time this happened was just last fall, so this isn't anything new for Saipan. So once again, I know last weekend was a false alarm, but I may be out of contact this coming weekend instead. Or perhaps I won't. We just don't know.
Due to the long break between updates, I have a lot of photos that haven't been linked here but which can be found at my Flickr set as usual, so go ahead and look through them when you have a moment.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Around and about
It's been a while since I posted, I know, but that's what happens when there's banding to do - we get home, hot and tired, and the last thing I want to do is sit down and compose a long description of everything I was just doing. But! Now it's the weekend. Recall, banding weeks in MAPS protocol are ten days long - six days of banding, and four days off, because if it rains one day we need a long buffer period to be able to push into so we can stay on schedule. Anyway, we used one of our off days earlier in the week because Dan wasn't feeling well, but that still leaves us with a three-day weekend of Tuesday through Thursday.
So yesterday (Tuesday), we did some exploring. First, lunch at Saigon Kitchen, a Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant with $5 lunch specials - can't beat that, really. $5 got me a delicious bun topped with barbecued beef and spring rolls, a spicy bean sprout salad, a cup of egg drop soup, and watermelon for dessert (if only I wasn't allergic - it seems to be a popular dessert item at restaurants here). Then we went on to Lake Susupe, which is remarkably well-hidden for a decently-sized lake on a small island. Only one road goes out to it, and that road gives no indication of ending up at a lake, so the few times we'd tried to get to it without seeking a map for directions, we'd ended up driving circles around it without ever actually seeing it. There is a small bamboo and wood pier at one end, which, oddly, starts in someone's yard - and they've posted a sign with a disclaimer stating that any injuries are not the responsibility of the landowner. Injuries? What?
Well, it turns out, the pier is in some serious disrepair, with major sections rotting away and entire areas blocked off with yellow caution tape where the decay had resulted in completely impassable holes. It was all easy enough to avoid, but suddenly the warning made a lot of sense. Once we'd had enough of the view from the pier, we started off on a little trail that circles the lake. There were turtles of some sort, although they were too far away to get a good look at them and they dove into the water before we could get close. Also found here were Yellow Bitterns and Mariana Moorhens, an endangered subspecies of the Common Moorhen (it is estimated that only 30-40 exist on Saipan, and we saw five).
From there it was on to Tank Beach on the east side of the island, which despite its name, has no tanks. Maybe it did once. It does still have several pillboxes, however, built under cliff overhangs with limestone blocks so as to look like part of the cliff itself from a distance. The east side has much rougher surf than the west, which is probably why the beach is lined with limestone cliffs and overhangs rather than gently sloping up as it does on the other side of the island. It makes for some very dramatic scenery, certainly. We wandered around here and explored the few shallow tidepools, where we found tons and tons of sea cucumbers, anemones, some tiny bright blue fish, and an endless supply of hermit crabs.
It was starting to get late at that point, so we headed back to the house for a bit, then went back out to go find the beach where the tanks actually are - Kilili Beach, also known as Invasion Beach, for obvious reasons. Two US tanks remain stranded there, making for an impressive sight at sunset. After that it was market time, which is always fun. For $6 I got a loaf of bread for sandwiches, two barbecued chicken legs (thigh and drumstick on each) for adding meat to dinners, a huge and beautiful bunch of kangkong (local leaf vegetable which is apparently similar to spinach, I have yet to try it), and a cup of sweet potato and coconut soup for dinner. Add to that the vegetables I still have from last week and the things I have in the cupboard, and I'm basically set for groceries for a while, though I know we'll go to the Thursday market and probably the Taste of the Marianas festival on Saturday, which will mean $5 meals at each of those. Also, I bought a dozen eggs from a local farm the other day, and that was $3.25, a dollar more than buying eggs imported from the mainland but I thought it was worth it. So, a week of groceries and dinners out a couple times for under $20. How insane is that? Initially it seemed like food was so expensive here, and it can be still if you buy occasional dairy products (I do like having milk available, even if it's $5 for a half-gallon) or other imported goods, but if you stick to local produce, harvest the free fruit that's all over, and eat far more vegetables and a lot less meat, it's extremely cheap to live here.
Rather than repeat myself several times over, I'm going to point you all to my flickr set for even more information, as everything from that praying mantis (row 3, column 4) and onward was uploaded over the last day or two, and most of the images, particularly those of the birds, have extensive captions. If there's something you think I didn't cover well or have questions about anyway, go ahead and ask in the comments and I'll reply in my next post.
So yesterday (Tuesday), we did some exploring. First, lunch at Saigon Kitchen, a Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant with $5 lunch specials - can't beat that, really. $5 got me a delicious bun topped with barbecued beef and spring rolls, a spicy bean sprout salad, a cup of egg drop soup, and watermelon for dessert (if only I wasn't allergic - it seems to be a popular dessert item at restaurants here). Then we went on to Lake Susupe, which is remarkably well-hidden for a decently-sized lake on a small island. Only one road goes out to it, and that road gives no indication of ending up at a lake, so the few times we'd tried to get to it without seeking a map for directions, we'd ended up driving circles around it without ever actually seeing it. There is a small bamboo and wood pier at one end, which, oddly, starts in someone's yard - and they've posted a sign with a disclaimer stating that any injuries are not the responsibility of the landowner. Injuries? What?
Well, it turns out, the pier is in some serious disrepair, with major sections rotting away and entire areas blocked off with yellow caution tape where the decay had resulted in completely impassable holes. It was all easy enough to avoid, but suddenly the warning made a lot of sense. Once we'd had enough of the view from the pier, we started off on a little trail that circles the lake. There were turtles of some sort, although they were too far away to get a good look at them and they dove into the water before we could get close. Also found here were Yellow Bitterns and Mariana Moorhens, an endangered subspecies of the Common Moorhen (it is estimated that only 30-40 exist on Saipan, and we saw five).
From there it was on to Tank Beach on the east side of the island, which despite its name, has no tanks. Maybe it did once. It does still have several pillboxes, however, built under cliff overhangs with limestone blocks so as to look like part of the cliff itself from a distance. The east side has much rougher surf than the west, which is probably why the beach is lined with limestone cliffs and overhangs rather than gently sloping up as it does on the other side of the island. It makes for some very dramatic scenery, certainly. We wandered around here and explored the few shallow tidepools, where we found tons and tons of sea cucumbers, anemones, some tiny bright blue fish, and an endless supply of hermit crabs.
It was starting to get late at that point, so we headed back to the house for a bit, then went back out to go find the beach where the tanks actually are - Kilili Beach, also known as Invasion Beach, for obvious reasons. Two US tanks remain stranded there, making for an impressive sight at sunset. After that it was market time, which is always fun. For $6 I got a loaf of bread for sandwiches, two barbecued chicken legs (thigh and drumstick on each) for adding meat to dinners, a huge and beautiful bunch of kangkong (local leaf vegetable which is apparently similar to spinach, I have yet to try it), and a cup of sweet potato and coconut soup for dinner. Add to that the vegetables I still have from last week and the things I have in the cupboard, and I'm basically set for groceries for a while, though I know we'll go to the Thursday market and probably the Taste of the Marianas festival on Saturday, which will mean $5 meals at each of those. Also, I bought a dozen eggs from a local farm the other day, and that was $3.25, a dollar more than buying eggs imported from the mainland but I thought it was worth it. So, a week of groceries and dinners out a couple times for under $20. How insane is that? Initially it seemed like food was so expensive here, and it can be still if you buy occasional dairy products (I do like having milk available, even if it's $5 for a half-gallon) or other imported goods, but if you stick to local produce, harvest the free fruit that's all over, and eat far more vegetables and a lot less meat, it's extremely cheap to live here.
Rather than repeat myself several times over, I'm going to point you all to my flickr set for even more information, as everything from that praying mantis (row 3, column 4) and onward was uploaded over the last day or two, and most of the images, particularly those of the birds, have extensive captions. If there's something you think I didn't cover well or have questions about anyway, go ahead and ask in the comments and I'll reply in my next post.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Seabirds and Statuary
Saturday was our first day off. Normally we'd get four in a row, but the next period starts on Tuesday, giving us three days - the previous two interns started theirs a day late so we'd be able to band with them an extra day. Anyway, we spent a good deal of the morning just hanging out, and then went in the afternoon to visit Marilyn and Randy, who are archaeologists who also volunteer their time to monitor the Wedge-Tailed Shearwater population on Managaha Island, and run a small seabird rehabilitation center within their apartment. The purpose of our visit was to see their White-Tailed Tropicbird, a very cool tern-like seabird with a very long tail. This one in particular had fractured a bone in its left wing. They had had it for about a week, and already the wing had improved a great deal. It's very likely that he'll be releasable sometime this week. It was so cool to see one up close - as you can tell by the lighting, his feathers were extremely glossy, especially on his head, which was something I wouldn't have expected having only seen them from a distance.
Also unexpected was that they had more than just the tropicbird, something they'd neglected to mention to us. Also loose in their apartment and on their porch (although most are unable to fly) were six White Terns, a Marianas Fruit Dove (who was very shy and nervous so I didn't get his picture), a Sooty Tern (also quite nervous), and a Great Crested Tern who they'd named Kree for the noise he makes.
Kree was found as a juvenile when he landed on a Japanese fishing boat off Saipan, weak and desperate for food. Somehow he had been separated from his colony, and terns are very social birds and learn to fish from parents and other colony members before ever leaving for migration. So Marilyn and Randy retrieved him and nursed him back to health, and released him, only for the same thing to happen again. It seems he'd never really learned to fish, and had come to expect handouts from humans to be his main food source, so they retrieved him once more. He selected the computer monitor as his perch, and hangs out there for the most part, except for when he feels like going for a walk on the apartment floor, darting around and attacking people's ankles, or anything else that looks interesting (apparently he especially loves to chase down tomatoes rolled past him and then destroy them). Marilyn and I discussed some things they might try in order to get him seeking out fish on his own, rather than continuing to hand-feed him and expecting him to figure it out somehow from that - but I suspect he may be too habituated to humans to be released successfully, at this point. What he needs is a place to hang out where he can't see people, and has to search for his smelt in a pool of water or something rather than having them handed to him. The other thing they could do would be to train him to keep close to them, and then take him out snorkeling - a sort of seabird falconry, I suppose, just to get him hunting, but I think that would take a lot more time than they have to give for just one bird. Which is really a shame, because he's very cool, and has quite a personality, and it's obvious they care about him a lot.
Afterward, we hiked down to the edge of the cliff near their apartment building to where a colony of Black Noddies nest in an old ironwood tree. We hadn't exactly been prepared for a hike, having all expected to spend the afternoon at the beach, but it was worth crawling through the tangantangan (a non-native tree that is the source of castor oil which took over most of the island after it was razed in the war) in our flip-flops and shorts to find the nests. We couldn't really count the number of birds as most of them were wheeling around in the air above the trees, but there were at least thirty nests that we could see, and there were probably more farther down the cliff.
So rather than only spending an hour or so at the beach, we stayed at the apartment for a while longer, and hung out up on the roof where we could see out to Forbidden Island and also a White Tern "nest" (recall, they just lay an egg on a branch and call it good enough), then once the sun was starting to set we headed out so we could go get some food. On the way out, though, we came across something very strange: the Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary sculpture garden. I know the photo is blurry, but like I said, the light was getting low and that was the best I could do. That photo only shows about a third of the whole area, though - the stations of the cross and then a few saints and angels. There was another area with several more saints, and then a long row of different versions of Mary, and an elaborately painted oratory. Another section of the garden had a gigantic Ten Commandments replica, a bunch more angels, and this dove fountain. It was so strange to see all of these elaborate and meticulously cared-for sculptures surrounded by the overgrown shacks and feral dogs that typify the south end of the island, but really, that in itself was typical. So many of the buildings on Saipan are run down and abandoned, but the churches (and the one Buddhist temple) are all brightly colored and well-maintained.
Yesterday (Sunday) Caroline and Nathan left, so now Daniel and I have the banding to ourselves. We start back up on Tuesday morning, so I suspect there will be plenty of pictures for you to see then.
Also unexpected was that they had more than just the tropicbird, something they'd neglected to mention to us. Also loose in their apartment and on their porch (although most are unable to fly) were six White Terns, a Marianas Fruit Dove (who was very shy and nervous so I didn't get his picture), a Sooty Tern (also quite nervous), and a Great Crested Tern who they'd named Kree for the noise he makes.
Kree was found as a juvenile when he landed on a Japanese fishing boat off Saipan, weak and desperate for food. Somehow he had been separated from his colony, and terns are very social birds and learn to fish from parents and other colony members before ever leaving for migration. So Marilyn and Randy retrieved him and nursed him back to health, and released him, only for the same thing to happen again. It seems he'd never really learned to fish, and had come to expect handouts from humans to be his main food source, so they retrieved him once more. He selected the computer monitor as his perch, and hangs out there for the most part, except for when he feels like going for a walk on the apartment floor, darting around and attacking people's ankles, or anything else that looks interesting (apparently he especially loves to chase down tomatoes rolled past him and then destroy them). Marilyn and I discussed some things they might try in order to get him seeking out fish on his own, rather than continuing to hand-feed him and expecting him to figure it out somehow from that - but I suspect he may be too habituated to humans to be released successfully, at this point. What he needs is a place to hang out where he can't see people, and has to search for his smelt in a pool of water or something rather than having them handed to him. The other thing they could do would be to train him to keep close to them, and then take him out snorkeling - a sort of seabird falconry, I suppose, just to get him hunting, but I think that would take a lot more time than they have to give for just one bird. Which is really a shame, because he's very cool, and has quite a personality, and it's obvious they care about him a lot.
Afterward, we hiked down to the edge of the cliff near their apartment building to where a colony of Black Noddies nest in an old ironwood tree. We hadn't exactly been prepared for a hike, having all expected to spend the afternoon at the beach, but it was worth crawling through the tangantangan (a non-native tree that is the source of castor oil which took over most of the island after it was razed in the war) in our flip-flops and shorts to find the nests. We couldn't really count the number of birds as most of them were wheeling around in the air above the trees, but there were at least thirty nests that we could see, and there were probably more farther down the cliff.
So rather than only spending an hour or so at the beach, we stayed at the apartment for a while longer, and hung out up on the roof where we could see out to Forbidden Island and also a White Tern "nest" (recall, they just lay an egg on a branch and call it good enough), then once the sun was starting to set we headed out so we could go get some food. On the way out, though, we came across something very strange: the Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary sculpture garden. I know the photo is blurry, but like I said, the light was getting low and that was the best I could do. That photo only shows about a third of the whole area, though - the stations of the cross and then a few saints and angels. There was another area with several more saints, and then a long row of different versions of Mary, and an elaborately painted oratory. Another section of the garden had a gigantic Ten Commandments replica, a bunch more angels, and this dove fountain. It was so strange to see all of these elaborate and meticulously cared-for sculptures surrounded by the overgrown shacks and feral dogs that typify the south end of the island, but really, that in itself was typical. So many of the buildings on Saipan are run down and abandoned, but the churches (and the one Buddhist temple) are all brightly colored and well-maintained.
Yesterday (Sunday) Caroline and Nathan left, so now Daniel and I have the banding to ourselves. We start back up on Tuesday morning, so I suspect there will be plenty of pictures for you to see then.
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