Catchment water

A Catchment water tank in Volcano Village, Hawaii

A lot of people on the Big Island live off the grid, sometimes by choice, often because those services aren’t available. Larger urban areas like Hilo and Kailua Kona have decent options, but the more rural the area, the less that’s available. Where I live, there’s public power and water, but no sewer system.

Because of this, catchment water tanks are a common sight, especially on the east side of the island, where there’s more rainfall. This one was in Volcano Village at a vacation rental. Generally, catchment water is used for everything except human consumption. Some homes install systems to purify catchment water to make it drinkable. Otherwise, drinking water is delivered by tanker or can be obtained by filling bottles at public water spigots located around the island.

The Numbers Game #126

Cannonball Tree flowers.

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 743. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.

Also posted for Terri’s Flower Hour. See more responses here.

Keep On Running

A Hen with her chick in Hawaii

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Babies.’ See more responses here.

This hen and chick caught my eye because other birds were trying to harass the chick and mom was having no truck with that. She was running this way and that seeing off the aggressors. Given that this was the only chick with her, chances are she’d already lost some from this brood, and was in no mood to take chances.

By the time I got my camera out, things had settled down. This was no doubt a relief to the chick as it had been struggling to keep up with all the running about!

Blackside Hawkfish

A Blackside Hawkfish in the waters off Hawaii

Blackside Hawkfishes, like others of its kin, are predators that hang out waiting for prey to pass by. I have often seen the waiting part, but never seen one go after anything.

Also, according to my fish book, ‘Hawkfishes live in haremic social groups consisting of a male and several females. When the male dies, the dominant female changes sex and takes his place.’ Which begs the question, when is Trump going to do something about these kinds of scandalous activities?