03-10-2008, 07:22 PM
Great Blue Herons are very rare on the BI, but I've seen Auku'u (Black-crowned Night-Heron) take small fish from the pond in Kapoho Beach with the injured Green Sea Turtle. Hawks are not likely to take fish; Osprey are fish specialists, and they are also rarely seen on the BI.
A friend in Glenwood has fishponds with koi and goldfish. She belongs to a club for "fish people" and she got some pond vegetation through them. She discovered that she also got a lot of Apple Snail eggs in the process and now has a lot of them in her ponds. Their eggs are fairly obvious. The snails are round and grow to the size of a fist (of a medium-sized person, whatever that is). Apple Snails are a problem for the kalo farmers in Waipio Valley. I heard that they were introduced by someone who wanted to build an escargot-supply business. However, the restaurants didn't respond in a big way, so the effort disappeared. Unfortunately, the snails didn't. Interestingly, these snails are the preferred food of an endangered species, the Snail Kite, a raptor found in the Everglades area of Florida. If only they could be moved to Florida.... Of course, I'm not sure if these are the exact same species of Apple Snail that the Snail Kites eat. [This last paragraph was an exercise in tangential writing.]
A friend in Glenwood has fishponds with koi and goldfish. She belongs to a club for "fish people" and she got some pond vegetation through them. She discovered that she also got a lot of Apple Snail eggs in the process and now has a lot of them in her ponds. Their eggs are fairly obvious. The snails are round and grow to the size of a fist (of a medium-sized person, whatever that is). Apple Snails are a problem for the kalo farmers in Waipio Valley. I heard that they were introduced by someone who wanted to build an escargot-supply business. However, the restaurants didn't respond in a big way, so the effort disappeared. Unfortunately, the snails didn't. Interestingly, these snails are the preferred food of an endangered species, the Snail Kite, a raptor found in the Everglades area of Florida. If only they could be moved to Florida.... Of course, I'm not sure if these are the exact same species of Apple Snail that the Snail Kites eat. [This last paragraph was an exercise in tangential writing.]