Author Archives: Graham

About Graham

I take photos when I'm out and about, recording life on the Big Island of Hawaii.

A family outing?

Three spotted eagle rays in the waters off Hawaii

On a recent snorkeling outing, my wife and I hadn’t gone far when we saw these three spotted eagle rays cruising around. The one was bigger than the other two and I wondered if this was a family group.

The three went back and forth before disappearing in the direction we’d come from. Or rather two of them did. The third, the smallest of the three, looped around a few times and seemed keen to demonstrate just how quickly it could turn and swoop and soar. Eventually, it followed the others.

A spotted eagle ray in the waters off Hawaii

We swam a little farther, then turned and headed back. It wasn’t long before we ran into the two juvenile rays again. Both were zipping around, carving turns, dipping down and rocketing up. Again, the smallest one was the most demonstrative and I got the feeling it was just having a ripping good time, practicing its acrobatics.

But it was also clearly quite curious. A couple of times it came straight up to me and I could see it looking at me, probably wondering what this cumbersome creature was in the water. I like to think I helped confirm its own superior swimming skills as I splashed my way back to the shore.

Big buoys

Two buoys and a net pen at Kawaihae Harbor

A while back, I went to take photos of a barge arriving in Kawaihae and saw these buoys on the beach. I don’t know what the net pen was for, but it was quite large, and looked similar to those I’ve seen used for farming fish out in the ocean. I presumed it was ashore here for some repairs

Regardless, the large yellow buoys caught my eye and made a good foreground for the barge being docked.

Fish for breakfast

A juvenile black-crowned night heron catches a fish

I was running early to work recently, so I decided to stop in Kawaihae, as I often do. With more time, I’d have gone for a walk along the coast, but I had only 15 minutes so I plumped for a visit to the south end of the harbor to see if there were any herons around.

A juvenile black-crowned night heron looks for a fish

I found two there, but one quickly disappeared. The other stood on a rock in shallow water, a popular fishing spot for them. I took a few photos and noticed the heron leaning forward. It had spotted something. An instant later, it plunged into the water and then emerged with a fish on its beak. It returned to the rock and paused. The fish appeared to be impaled on the heron’s beak, but extracting the beak risked losing the fish before it could be eaten.

A moment later, the heron hopped over to the small beach where I was. There, it popped the fish into the air and swallowed it in one slick movement. This whole sequence took less than three minutes. The heron stayed on the beach and I returned to my car and headed off to work, very glad that I’d stopped by.

A juvenile black-crowned night heron eats a fish

Tangerine flowers

A while back I posted a photo (here) of one of the heavily-laden tangerine trees in the yard. I noted that in my eight years living here I’d never seen a flower on the tree despite its prolific production of fruit.

However, last week, when I was up on a ladder harvesting the last of the current crop of fruit, I finally saw the flowers in the top photo. Then, when I’d knocked the last of the fruit down, I saw (bottom photo) one tangerine had a bit of branch still attached which bore, not only a flower, but also a leaf bearing a cluster of butterfly eggs.

I still don’t know how I’ve missed seeing these flowers before. They’re small, but not minuscule, and they have a lovely scent. While I wouldn’t expect to see flowers on higher branches, the lowest branches are at eye level and below. And I still haven’t seen bees and butterflies around the trees, though the eggs clearly show they do visit.

Hawi mural

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

I was going to take a photo of a now completed mural-in-progess I used in a previous challenge (here), but it was rather obscured by a food wagon and some other items being stored in the corner of an open square. Instead, I took this photo, of one of the several other murals surrounding that square, which is the site of a former restaurant that burned down a few years ago.

Abstracts: Riding the bus

Recently, I had to take the bus home from work. I got down to the pick-up spot in plenty of time and soon a bus appeared, heading my way. I quickly realized I had a problem. Not only did this bus have no sign on it saying where it was going, but it also didn’t turn in to the resort it was supposed to visit, at least according to the schedule. Instead it drove past me and turned into a different resort which should have been its second stop in this area.

I had no idea what was going on, but I knew the bus had to come out of the resort the same way it went in, so I walked up the road to the security gate and waited for the bus to return. When it did, I stopped it and asked the driver where it was going. It turned out it was the bus I wanted.

The driver was quite friendly and said he’d look out for me in the future. I realized this bus was scheduled for the morning commute to work and the evening return home. It probably rarely picked up anyone other than regular commuters. I didn’t have the heart to tell him my journey was a one off.

The trip itself was fine. In the confines of the bus, it was hard to know whether we were going fast or slow. A strong crosswind was blowing and we swayed back and forth as we passed through cuttings, and also when the driver rummaged around for a pastry, then consumed it.

When we got to Hawi, the driver dropped me at the end of my driveway and I stood to there as 15 or 20 vehicles, caught in the bus’s wake, rumbled by. It wasn’t a bad way to get home, but probably a one-off since my work schedule is variable and a one-a-day bus doesn’t work for me.

I took the photo between the two seats in front of me because I liked the the shapes and lines and angles.

View of Hualalai

An early morning view of Hualalai Volcano from the beach below Pu’ukohala Heiau at Kawaihae.

Manta ray encounter

Acute halfbeaks pass in front of a manta ray off Hawaii

My most recent manta ray encounter was notable for the sheer exuberance of the ray. It swam up to my wife and me, then curved away, then came back again. At one point it moved farther off, into murkier, shallow water (which is why I didn’t get photos) and did several loop de loops for no apparent reason. It swam along with us for a while, closer to the shore, until we lost sight of it.

The top photo shows it approaching. I love it when they come straight towards me. They look so strange and yet so amazing, and there’s nothing to fear whatsoever since they’re plankton eaters and among the least dangerous creatures in the water. It wasn’t until I processed my photos that I noticed the acute halfbeaks passing between us. Ironically, this might be one of my better photos of them, captured unintentionally.

The bottom photo shows one of the ray’s curving passes with its mouth closed which, when I think about it, might be the first time I’ve seen that.

Graham's Island

Life on the Big Island of Hawaii