17 Jun 2024
Very well organized Birding trip to sanctuary. Easy to find the meet-up place and we enjoyed the group of people on our tour. We also thoroughly enjoyed the well-informed guided tour with Gary with lots of information about the geology, flora and fauna, and history of the area, as well as birds. Good lunch food, snacks, drinks, and other provisions. Plenty of stops for bathroom breaks also. We were able to see 31 birds and Gary was very good at finding them by listening. Many of us have used e-Bird but that does not work at the Forest Reserve or really anywhere here on Hawaii, so you really do need a guide. One thing that could make the trip better is a list of the targeted birds with pictures that group members could refer to as the guide is showing us where to look. Although everyone on our tour was very interested in birding, none of us were familiar with the very rare target species which has similar sounding names. A pictoral chart would be easy to provide and would have greatly increased our enjoyment of the trip. One bonus for us is that we have since traveled to Volcano national park and seen some of the same targeted birds there.