New generation of ‘alala: Captive breeding program staff optimistic about November release

Imagine pre-dawn, when the sky turns pale after a long night.

Imagine a call breaking the silence and carrying through the trees, a “cracked caw,” as one ornithologist put it years ago: a crow’s call.

Then another call. And another, as the ‘alala in the forest wake up and remind their neighbors they are still there, yes, and please don’t come near this tree, it’s mine.

You have to imagine these things because it’s been nearly 25 years since they actually happened.

Today, the only Hawaiian crows calling from trees live in conservation centers on the Big Island and Maui, not the wild.

Like so many other island birds, their numbers have been decimated from all sides: avian malaria, toxoplasmosis, introduced predators, native predators, loss of forest habitat.

There are 131 birds — 112 adults and 19 fledglings — left in the world, the result of a decades-long breeding effort that begins a new chapter in November, when a first group of young ‘alala moves into an outdoor aviary at Pu‘u Maka‘ala Natural Area Reserve.

If all goes well, those birds will be the foundation of a new wild population.

“Everyone’s extremely excited,” said Bryce Masuda, program manager at the Keauhou Bird Conservation Center, a 140-acre campus on Kamehameha Schools land in Volcano. “It’s been a long time coming.”

At first, people didn’t think the ‘alala needed to be saved.

Paul Banko, biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, remembers going into the field with his father, Win, in the 1970s to search for ‘alala. Win Banko worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and at the time was the only federal biologist assigned to the problem of Hawaii’s endangered species.

“His mandate was to figure out what’s going on, why are so many Hawaiian forest birds going extinct?” Paul Banko said in a recent interview. “When I joined him, I think the most (‘alala) we found was 56 or so that we could really account for.”

Efforts to get a captive breeding program in place didn’t take off.

“It was actually very difficult to get people to believe him (his father) that the Hawaiian crow is in kind of low numbers,” Banko said. “It simply was hard for people to accept the fact that a crow, of all species, was in trouble.”

“You think of the mainland ones: Oh, yeah, they go down to McDonald’s and they steal french fries; they’re very adaptable,” Masuda said.

But not all crows are. The aga, or Mariana crow, has a population of about 100 on the islands of Rota and Guam. Its story is similar to that of the ‘alala, although the tale also includes predation by brown tree snakes and monitor lizards.

Shaped over millennia to an island-specific life, the birds cannot adapt fast enough to the ceaseless barrage of threats, particularly disease.

By the time the first two ‘alala were brought into captivity for breeding, they already had contracted avian malaria. They died shortly after arriving at a mainland facility.

The Bankos took three more young birds into captivity, sending them this time to a state breeding facility that was concentrating its efforts on saving the nene. Other state biologists brought in more birds.

The wild population stumbled through the next decade.

“It was just profoundly sad to see these older birds, these remnant birds just kind of winking out over time,” Banko said.

The last wild offspring he knew about was hatched from a mother he and his father had banded 16 years prior. That was in 1992.

The captive breeding program launched a release effort in the mid-1990s in South Kona. The Keauhou Bird Conservation Center opened in 1996. It currently has a staff of eight, along with eight interns and a five-person field crew.

The first release was “actually pretty successful,” Banko said. “We had some very positive social interactions, we had pair bonding.” One captive-reared bird even paired up with a wild bird.

Nature, however, measures success differently. The captive-reared bird was later killed by an ‘io, a native predator.

“It’s just the way it is out there,” Banko said. “It’s just a struggle for existence.” The last wild pair of ‘alala was seen in 2002.

There is a mural on the walls of the conservation center’s education room, painted by artist Kathleen Kam. It looks idyllic at first glance: Honeycreepers are perched in verdant trees alongside ‘alala, nests with chicks crying for food. There are ‘io and pueo in sight. And there are mouflon, cattle, goats and pigs. Rats, mongoose and a feral cat.

Two thousand schoolchildren come through the education room annually, Masuda said. Reservations at the annual community open house fill up early every year.

“We’re in full swing,” said education and outreach coordinator Lea Ka‘aha‘aina.

When students see the mural, they talk about how the Hawaiian ecosystems connect together, how ‘alala eventually will help themselves in their own recovery by dispersing seeds that will help the forests come back. How there always will be challenges. But maybe this time, with the extra boost from the partnership that created the recovery effort, the birds can have a stable population.

The kids see a simplified, colorful pedigree chart used in the matchmaking process to guard against inbreeding. The full pedigree is computerized. But ultimately, Masuda said, matchmaking within a monogamous and territorial species “depends on the birds getting along with each other.”

Kids see the transport cages used to send birds between Maui and the Big Island for breeding — Hawaiian Airlines allows the center staff to bring the cages into the cabin, as opposed to checking them in stowage.

They see signs of another bird breeding and translocation program: the first incubator to hold a California condor egg. The condors also were brought back from the brink with assistance from the same organization that is now helping ‘alala: the San Diego Zoo Global’s Institute for Conservation Research.

Some of the techniques used in the condor project are being applied for ‘alala, such as the use of puppet birds (an unassuming black sock becomes an “‘alala” once a plastic crow head is attached to it) to hand-rear chicks so they will not imprint on human beings.

“We have all this information about the 1990s release,” Masuda said. “We have a lot of the information from a lot of the bird introductions and releases around the world: things that have and haven’t worked.”

Adding to the breeding and translocation knowledge bank is a priority. Posters from research collaborations with universities around the world line the walls of the main buildings.

The Institute for Conservation Research’s Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program also works with the palila and species from Maui and Kauai, such as the Maui parrotbill and puaiohi.

“We think of ourselves as kind of the emergency room for birds,” Masuda said. “This is a last resort — no one wants to have the birds in captivity for breeding, but if they’re going extinct … it’s the only thing we can do to keep them alive.”

The ‘alala project itself is a partnership between San Diego Zoo Global, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In additional to state and federal funding, ticket sales from the nonprofit zoo trickle down to support project costs. Large foundations and private donors contribute as well. There are at least five release years planned and the first will cost about $800,000 (subsequent years will cost about $400,000).

And smaller contributions add up. The neighboring Volcano Winery signs for FedEx packages when drivers can’t find the KBCC. The Panaewa Zoo brings extra papaya for the birds.

“What we do here is very much the result of a community effort,” Masuda said. People are proud, he said, that this is happening on Hawaii Island.

Morning light streamed into an aviary near the education room, where a breeding pair of ‘alala fluffed their black-brown feathers from their perches on ohia branches. They are forest birds, but much larger than the honeycreepers that share the same trees.

“That’s what they prefer — the big koa and ohia trees,” Masuda said. “A thick understory as well, with a lot of fruit.” Foraging comes instinctively to the birds, who from a young age seem to recognize the native fruits their ancestors preferred.

“We provide as much as we can to them, so they continue to build that knowledge,” Masuda said. Diets are supplemented by papaya, apples, melon, frozen peas and carrots, bird food, mealworms and small mice. ‘Alala cache their food: they’ll hide morsels under rocks and logs and return to the same spot to eat later.

The female ‘alala went to a food box, pecking out a chunk of dried bird seed. She flapped to the ground and dropped the seed chunk into a water tub to soften it up.

“I’m biased, of course, but I think they’re amazing birds,” Masuda said.

Earlier this week, a study found the ‘alala to be one of two crow species — and one of a handful of species worldwide — to use tools.

“They are really engaging,” Banko said. “You can immediately understand why Hawaiians revered them.” The ‘alala was considered a guide to the spirit world in ancient Hawaiian culture; it is also an ‘aumakua (family spiritual guardian).

Around the world, Banko said, native cultures “understand that crows and ravens are kind of special birds.”

The corvid family also includes rooks, magpies and jays. Even in a family known for its chattiness, the ‘alala stands out. It has the more discrete vocalizations of any corvid (the number is in the mid-20s). Some calls sound as if a human being made them.

Ka‘aha‘aina told the Tribune-Herald in a previous interview that ‘alala “make quite an impression. They’re so playful when you watch them interacting with each other.”

“They’re so curious,” she said.

The center staff works to keep that curiosity directed away from the birds’ caretakers. Aside from the main building’s attached habitats, all aviaries are built with one-way glass. Signs reading “No Talking In This Room” are posted outside the space where fledglings acclimate to life outside of a brooder.

“The end goal is always to release birds into the wild,” Masuda said.

‘Alala hatchlings have oversized heads and comically small wings. Their eyes are closed. They have almost no feathers. It can take 48 hours for a chick to break out of its blue speckled eggshell.

“We’re all on pins and needles, texting each other, updating each other—it’s getting closer,” Masuda said.

“It’s so fragile … and it grows up and two months later it’s fully grown and feeding on its own. We just feel fortunate, I think, to be part of that process and to be able to help out the ‘alala.”

In the past few years, some birds have been allowed to parent-rear their own chicks.

“We know that we can get the best success with hand-rearing, but parent rearing is a natural behavior that we want to encourage,” Masuda said. Females incubate their own eggs immediately after laying them, and staff monitor the nests via a security-camera system that wouldn’t be out of place in a heist movie.

Eggs are moved to artificial incubators before hatching and are weighed and candled (a method where light is shone through the egg to measure developmental markers) daily.

On hatching, the chicks live in brooders, nestled among warm washcloths. They are fed eight times a day.

“There’s so much that goes on,” Masuda said. “There are so many intricate details that we have to keep track of.”

But for all that has been learned about ‘alala breeding and biology in the past 20 years, there’s still one overwhelming unknown: What will happen once the birds are released?

“We’re making the best decisions we can,” Masuda said. “We might have to change our technique on the fly, and that’s totally fine because we’ll be learning along the way. It’s kind of exciting.”

“We all believe in it,” he said. “We’re all hopeful that it will turn out well.”

”It’s a very long-term process,” Banko said.

Through the one-way glass in one of the largest KBCC aviaries, a young ‘alala dipped its beak into a dish of berries, slopping the meal across its broad bill.

Five other ‘alala sat in the ohia trees, high above the aviary floor, where large logs were strewn.

They made grumbling sounds to one another, and soft cries.

There were cheeps, whoops, rasps and cracked caws.

The juvenile birds, the release candidates, are not yet territorial. They didn’t care whose tree was whose. But they still had plenty to say.

Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.