Field Notes
Observations and stories
Short notes from the field: behavior seen, identification puzzles, and conservation news worth recording. Subscribe by RSS.
November 8, 2026 · Conservation
A promise about a place
In 2015 Nate Yuen led me up a gated trail in the Waiʻanae Mountains to look for happy face spiders, and asked me afterward not to name it. I kept the name out. Several years later, building a map of my own observations, I found what I had missed.
October 30, 2026 · Conservation
Lehua Island after the rats
In 2016 I photographed a dead rat on Lord Howe Island. Five years earlier I had dived off Lehua, another island where rats were winning. Both have since removed every rat, and how they did it says a lot about what island conservation actually demands.
October 29, 2026 · Science
Why citizen science matters
I am an engineer with a camera, not a scientist. Fifteen years and 33,000 observations later, here is how travel and backyard records turn into science, from Oʻahu's reefs to the Laurel Highlands.
October 24, 2026 · Journal
Fifteen years a naturalist
On October 24, 2011, a researcher asked me to post one hawksbill turtle photo to iNaturalist. Fifteen years later, that request is the reason this journal exists.
August 15, 2023 · Conservation
Guinea grass and the Maui fires
How an invasive African grass turned Maui's former plantation lands into fuel for the August 2023 fires.