48 Director's Annual Report. 



that it was not the proper season for securing birds, saying that it 

 would be useless to make the severe climb up the mountain to 

 where the birds' nests were. Some weeks later, they assured me, 

 l^au would be much more plentiful. As it is impossible to find 

 the birds' burrows without specially trained dogs, which only the 

 natives have, I was forced to give up the project for the time being. 



My next meeting with the Uau was on May 9. I was on a 

 two day camping trip on the Kaunuohua trail, which leads down 

 the pali into Pelekunu valley. The object of the trip was to spend 

 a late evening and early morning in that locality, in the hope of 

 hearing the call, and, if possible, secure specimens of the Oo, since 

 the bird, in former times, frequented that seAion. On the way 

 down, at about a 3500 foot level, I found the bill, wings, feet and 

 some loose feathers of an ITau that had been killed and eaten by 

 some animal, presumably a mongoose, not more than the day be- 

 fore. That night I went into camp beside the trail in a drenching 

 rain. The camp was not an elaborate affair, simply a few ieie 

 vines and ferns piled on a narrow shelf on the pali, the ledge being 

 scarcely wide enough to lie on. The face of the pali was almost 

 perpendicular for hundreds of feet above and below me. In fact, 

 it was so steep that it was necessary, as a precaution, to drive 

 stakes along the lower side of my bed to prevent the possibility of 

 its slipping off the edge and my rolling off during the night. 



Shortly after dark I began to hear the strange, weird cry of 

 these petrels, as they sailed about the cliffs, evidently attracfted by, 

 and much exercised over, my campfire. All night long — long 

 after the fires had died out — they could be heard calling here and 

 there about my "sv/allow nest" camp. A long drawn out IT-a-u, 

 suggesting the wail of a lonesome cat, would be answered by 

 Uau-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka, a note just petrel enough to be recognized 

 as such, yet combining such a number of other suggestive sounds, 

 as to render it both indescribable and unforgetable. Though they 

 frequently flew close to me, there was so much heavy fog that it 

 was useless to shoot in the dark, besides it would have been almost 

 impossible to have secured a bird from the precipice below me if 

 it had been killed by a chance shot. The experiences of the night, 

 however, were enough to assure me that the petrels were about in 

 sufficient numbers to warrant an effort to secure specimens, when 

 I could manage the undertaking. 



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