Kolea fans, listen up! By this time next month, Hawai'i's kolea will be packed up for Alaska, so pay attention to your favorite. Who knows which bird will take off first?

In the meantime, here are a few bits of kolea lore. I was looking through an old batch of photos from the Makali'i voyaging expedition that took Mau Piailug to Satawal in 1999, and I found a picture of a little, hand-made sign that we saw on remote Puluwat Atoll.

On the sign, residents of the island depicted the origin of their proudest tradition, navigation. The ancient legend of how navigation originated on Puluwat is about a bird that was exhausted when it reached the lonely atoll. A kind woman found the nearly dead bird and gave it food and water until it could continue its flight.

In gratitude, the bird taught the people of the island navigation. Here's how. The bird painted on the hand-made sign looks like a kolea. The bird must have flown in from the north. This meant that there must be land to the north. So if you steered your canoe north, you would find land, a lesson in navigation.

Here's a different story from Judy Mori in Kane'ohe. Her kolea hangs out in the parking lot near the food court at Windward Shopping Mall. That's where she feeds crackers to myna birds.

She could never get the kolea to eat her crackers. It was shy. But about a month ago, it developed a taste for crackers although it doesn't care much for the grapes she puts out. Just eats one now and then. But now this kolea really goes for crackers.

In fact, it chases off the myna birds. When a nosy myna tries to share the crackers, a few smart pecks send it packing. The mynas know better than to step up when the kolea is dining. Sometimes a sparrow will try to sneak up in back for a bite but the kolea hiccups at it and it flies away.

Mori may have one answer for a question frequently asked about kolea. Where do they take off for Alaska? She said she and her husband have seen them congregating at the veterans cemetery on the Windward Side behind the monument. Mori said she's counted maybe 35 kolea there at one time.

I finally discovered why the kolea on the playing fields behind Kaimuki High School suddenly make their squeaking noise. On those lawns, the territories of the kolea aren't well defined. There's still polite argument about it. When they play this territorial game, they make the challenging noise.

Sometimes one or two kolea seem to try to drive another away by running at it. The games go on for at least half an hour. It's more like ballet than a fight, as if they are playing tag at recess. They make this squeak when they fly at each other, like Maori warriors make faces at each other before battle. They also make the squeak when an outsider flies over to check out the territory. They're telling him to buzz off.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.