Bees on an agave flower
I’ve posted about agave attenuata before, in January of last year (here). The plants are blooming again and, once again, the bees are all over them. This year I wanted to focus on the bees in flight, just before they settled on the flowers to forage. This resulted in a fair number of bees buzzing around my head, but I worry less about that than I used to. I took a lot of photos, most of which were free of bees, or featured bee blurs.
These were a couple of my favorites, each capturing a bee just before plunging into the bounty within.
Signs: Blind man driving
I was driving home from work when I slowed to a halt behind a van waiting in line at a junction. My attention was immediately drawn to the line above. It was only then that I took in the rest of the vehicle and saw how apropos the line was.
Snow on Mauna Kea
This past week or so has been a bit bleak weather-wise. At one point we had a high wind warning, winter storm warning, flash flood warning, and a high surf warning. The warnings were justified. Winds blew at 40 to 50 knots with higher gusts. Rain bucketed down. Surf pounded the shorelines. It was an unfortunate week to be vacationing here.
Meanwhile, up on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the winter storm warning produced a decent snowfall giving those peaks a Christmassy look, albeit a few weeks too late.
GE Propulsion Test Platform
I saw this plane when I was out walking one day, near the northern tip of the Big Island. It was flying quite low, unusually so for a big plane, as it headed south toward Kailua Kona.
The plane is a Boeing 747-400, formerly owned by Japan Airlines, but now used by GE to test jet engines. Apparently, it was operating out of Kona Airport for a week, performing warm weather engine tests.
Yellow chub and orangespine unicornfish
The yellow chub in this photo is actually a gray chub, but a few individuals, such as this one, can be yellow, white, or multicolored. This one is something of a regular at one spot on the North Kohala coast.
The orangespine unicornfish is seen in many places along the coast and always has a grumpy look. In this case, it looks like it’s upset that the chub has swum into its territory.
Guava Moth
This is a guava moth (Ophiusa disjungens), which hails from south-east Asia and the south Pacific, but has also found a home in Hawaii. This one is a darker variant of the moth which is more often mostly yellow or orange.
King Kamehameha statue
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Old.’ See more offerings here.
This is the original statue of Kamehameha 1, the king who first united the Hawaiian Islands. The statue was commissioned in 1878, but was lost off the Falkland Islands. A new statue was made, but in the meantime, the original one was salvaged. The new statue was put up in Honolulu and the original shipped to Kapaau.
Not long after I took this photo, the trees in the background were badly damaged during a windstorm and had to be cut down, so this scene looks quite different today.
Find more information about the statue here. For more information about King Kamehameha’s history, go to nps.gov/puhe/learn/historyculture/kamehameha.htm.
Laelia rubescens orchid
This laelia rubescens (aurea x alba) orchid was at Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. For more information about Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, go to htbg.com.
