June 17, 2007

Saturday I decided to get back to nature and joined the Audubon Society on a 2 hour discovery walk at nearby Paiko Lagoon. This is a wild bird sanctuary on Maunalua Bay by Hawaii Kai. We walked out into the bay - which was sand and shallow water because of the very low tide. There were some frigate birds, and others I can't remember the name of, Alice Roberts, our guide, say there seemed to be more birds on the golf courses than in a preserve. But there were plenty of creatures around if we looked down by our feet... there were an amazing bunch of "tongues" from some kind of worms in the shallows were extruded out of their holes and looked like blobs of jelly fish. The four year old girl with us had a great time collecting this mucosy clear gel. A dead eel was pulled close to a big crab hole, with nibbles taken out. Little white box crabs and big blue crabs were chased after. There was a worm that looked like a little centipede that had stinging/cutting glassy things on it's legs. We were told that some say you can get out the glassy pokey things with Scotch tape if you made the mistake of touching their legs. We got rid of some invasive and bad ogo sea weed, and found some orange and blue sponges under the big rocks. Schools of mullet, momi and some other kinds of little fish swam around our feet. I learned so much about the bay. Walking out there into the bay at low tide is fantastic!