We spend many hours, days, and indeed, months closely monitoring the behavior of the breeding pairs of `alala during their breeding season (April – July). We have two goals: first, to determine when to separate the male from his mate — if he becomes too aggressive then we need to give him “time outs” for bad behavior — and secondly, to determine if the female is incubating well enough to leave her with her eggs. We “score” the behavior of the female to determine when she is about to lay an egg, first by measuring her “cup forming” time and secondly by documenting her “incubation time.” When her cup forming drops to a low percentage and her incubation time starts to climb, we know it’s time to remove the male (he’s done his job by then).
When her incubation time goes over 80%, then we are fairly certain she is about to lay her egg. After egg laying, if her incubation time drops below 80%, we know it’s time to collect her eggs for artificial incubation. This system of scoring behavior can be seen in this 2004 graph documenting the reproductive cycles of Lilinoe in 2004. She laid four clutches of eggs, many of which were fertile. Careful video recording and monitoring of Lilinoe and 13 other `alala pairs at the Keauhou and Maui Bird Conservation centers in 2005 will hopefully produce many more good `alala eggs… our fingers are crossed.

Alan Lieberman is the program director for the San Diego Zoo’s Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program.

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