OUR HONOLULU

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

Keep a close eye on your kolea these days. The birds are about ready to fly off to Alaska. Some may have already gone. Last year, according to my counts in Ala Wai Park, the first batch left around April 16. The numbers dropped again on April 23 and tapered off to zero on April 27.

On Kaua'i, Advertiser staffer Jan TenBruggencate said he saw between 75 and 100 kolea standing around April 5 on Pila'a Beach. That's the first sighting of a big group like that this year. But what does it mean? None of my kolea counts show departures although the birds are wearing their flight plumage.

Gladys Watanabe of 'Aiea called about her sister who has a male kolea wearing his tuxedo in her back yard in Palolo. He's been coming back for five years. This kolea eats earthworms and hangs out under a puakenikeni tree. The sister started feeding it three years ago. The sister wanted to know how kolea mate in Alaska.

Frankly, I'm not sure that anybody has seen kolea mate. It's difficult enough just to find a nest on the tundra in Alaska because they are so well hidden and the tundra is so vast. However, kolea guru Wally Johnson described the process of raising a baby kolea.

It doesn't take long because the parents have to take off again for Hawai'i in August. Within a month, a young kolea is feeding himself or herself. There's plenty to eat on the tundra. Alaska's mosquitoes are the biggest in the world.

The father leaves first, then the mother. The teenagers stay behind to fatten up for the trip. How a young kolea knows which way to fly to Hawai'i is beyond me. Apparently nobody teaches them. They just know. Johnson said the death rate of young kolea may be quite high.

Some may crash on the trip. When they get to Hawai'i, the older kolea have taken the best real estate. They chase new arrivals away. Some of them may starve. Last year among the late arrivals I saw a lame kolea with only one foot, looking very dejected. Don't know what happened to it. The funny thing is you never see a dead kolea.

Here are some other items of over-the-back-fence news. Financial adviser Jim Haskins in Kailua was setting up a new field on his Microsoft program when he ran into a problem. He called the company for help. A nice young man with a perfect English accent in Bombay talked him to a solution on the phone ... Elaine Stroup of Beretania Street said Robert Louis Stevenson never sat under the banyan tree at the Moana Hotel. He died before it was planted. The Robert Louis Stevenson banyan was on Tusitala Street.

A lady named Debbie on Maui ordered a pair of white shoes via the Internet from a store in California to give as a Christmas present. By February, she got tired of waiting for the shoes, so she called the store to asked what happened. "We sent them overland and they came back," the clerk explained.