I saw this man, down on the rocks below Upolu Airport, collecting Opihi. Opihi is the Hawaiian word for limpets, and they are a prized food for the locals. Gathering them though is not an easy task. For one thing, it takes place at the water line. Opihi pickers are guaranteed to get wet and have to take great care not to get washed out to sea. One or two seem to disappear every year.
The Opihi also have to be taken while they are feeding and relaxed. Otherwise they will be so firmly adhered to the rocks that no amount of prying will loosen them.
The utility pipes and boxes in one of the waiting areas at Kailua Kona airport are covered in stickers. I don’t know why people started putting them there, but the authorities haven’t removed them so it continues to be a little guerrilla art show.
Ti plants are usually grown for their large, colorful leaves, but they do produce small white and fragrant flowers. Posted for Terri’s Flower Hour. See more responses here.
Telescopes in the Smithsonian Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea and what they’re thinking.
The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 235. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.
A Gold Dust Day Gecko checking things out from the coin return slot.A Footstool Palm.These ants quickly found a blob of dropped jam.A Bluefin Trevally catches the light.A praying mantis on glass.The covered lanai next door. The place has supposedly sold, but nothing has changed there yet.
One of the roosters that now live at Mahukona Beach Park. There never used to be any, but the numbers have been creeping up this past year and I think are in double figures now. It’s certainly louder down there than it was!
On high alert on a trellis with Chilean Glory Vine (Eccremocarpus scaber)
All that alertness makes a cat tired.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Love Your Pet.’ See more responses here. We don’t have pets currently, so here are some archive photos of Chairman Meow, our cat from our old home in Washington State.
He was a Ragdoll, a breed noted for its mellow temperament. Happily, he was not a hunter, though he would stare intently at birds, except for hummingbirds, which left him with a bewildered expression! He also shed boatloads of fine, soft hair. A thorough combing would produce a wad of hair, but when he walked away, more would fly off him.
In the mornings, he’d climb up on the bed and sit on us until he was let out. One house had a screen door and it was common to hear a thud against it in the morning, a sign he wanted to come in again. When I opened the door, looking down for him, he was nowhere to be seen. But when I looked up there he was, hanging halfway up, his claws gripping the screen. The old lady who lived across the street said it gave her a great deal of amusement to witness this daily ritual!
Time for a rest with two paws out.
We were going to bring him with us to Hawaii, but he used to end up frothing at the mouth on the two mile car ride to the vet! So he stayed behind in a good situation until he passed away a few years back.
Graham's Island 