If you’ve traveled to Hawaii at any time during the past 30 years, you’ll know that you’re obliged to complete a declaration form for the State of Hawaii Department of Agriculture, certifying you are not carrying any contraband of the flora or fauna variety. The reverse of the form is a survey from the Department of Tourism for visitors and returning residents, detailing length and purpose of stay. Frankly, I’ve 
nearly memorized this form, as it is unchanged since I first visited in 1976. I must feature myself an erstwhile kama’aina, as I’m pleased to tick the last box in the field ‘Number of visits to Hawaii’, at more than 20.
Even so, we never get to do as much on our visits as we’d like. Although not sluggards, we do enjoy daily beach time- two or three hours- and the occasional movie, and this eats considerably into what we’ve got at our disposal. With all that, even in the concrete and asphalt maze that represents so much of Waikiki, we still are surprised by what we see and this late trip more so than before. Keith and I both love birds and tropical foliage and, not surprising, one finds both together. For the first time ever, I saw an amakihi amidst the torch ginger in the garden of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. This diminutive honey creeper with the curved beak and breast feathers the color of Dijon mustard was a surprising site. The rarity of the honey creepers is a given, and my presumption always is that something rare should be somewhere remote. Had we been on a nature hike above the Manoa Valley, we would have been no less delighted but a little less surprised to see this tiny bird.
By the same token, we were surprised to see on several occasions elepai’o, perhaps a little less elusive, on walks we had taken through Kapiolani Park. For years, ‘Elepaio’ hadn’t been much for me more than the name of a street I used as a shortcut to Kahala Avenue and back to Waikiki.
Mind you, neither of these bird species are particularly common, and they are both very, very small. The elepai’o is hardly as large as a half-dollar coin. Still and all, that we saw them on this trip, without making any particular effort was, in my view significant. My initial reflection was that, given the fewer numbers of tourists, human activity was both not impeding the birds’ natural range, or limiting their ability to access areas the presence of so many people would ordinarily cause them to avoid. Too, residential and commercial development has ground to a halt and with it habitat destruction.
Moreover, there might be something a bit more broadly systemic at work, too, and I say this with the full realization that the collective consciousness of the human species is possessed of sufficient ego that it has historically removed itself as a component of any natural earthly system. But hope springs eternal, as the poet says, and perhaps those in Hawaii and elsewhere who’ve wisely counseled linking our consciousness with that of the larger natural world are finally achieving some effect. I hope the small birds we were delighted to see represent a physical manifestation of a spiritual move in the right direction.