This fisherman was waiting for the sea to settle before finding a spot to cast his line. It pays to be careful. People do get washed of the shoreline rocks, but though this photo makes it look like the fisherman is surrounded by breaking waves, he’s actually in a safe spot.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Water Droplets.’ See more responses here.
Light rain began to fall right after this metal panel had been waxed, resulting in an array of water drops beading up on the surface.
On my drives to and from Upolu Airport, it’s not uncommon to encounter groups of sheep on the road. Some of the field fencing is not in the greatest shape and, in any case, it’s primarily there to corral cattle, not that it always works for that either.
When I do encounter sheep, their typical response is to run ahead of me. At some point though, they usually veer off to the side and I can get by. Sometimes they turn and run back towards me. The last group I saw ran off, with several of the leaping into the air, twirling as they did so. I don’t think it was because they were so excited to see me.
I was out snorkeling with a friend when I noticed her taking photos of a small clump of floating debris. When I headed over to see what was so interesting about the debris, I saw a host of tiny fish swimming around and within the clump. This was a small example of how fish, particularly smaller fish, will use floating objects to give them some cover and security from predators.
Most of the fish appeared to be sergeant fish, probably Indo-Pacific Sergeants, no more than half an inch long, but with their dark bars quite distinct. There were a couple of other species there, too, in smaller numbers, but I’m not sure what they were. (Update: The slightly larger grey fish are freckled driftfish. Thanks to John Hoover for the ID.)
The second photo gives a sense of scale and shows how small this little world was. It also shows the fish migrating across to check out whether this new clumpy thing might make a good new home. They did this with both of us, but returned to the floating debris, figuring wisely that it offered better shelter for them.
Posted in response to this week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme of ‘Quiet Places.’ See more responses here.
Back in June, I went to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to do a little hiking. The park had recently reopened and I thought it would be a good time to do some of the popular trails near the summit that are usually crowded. I was right about this because I saw hardly anyone all day.
One of the trails I hiked was the Byron Ledge Trail and when I got to a junction near the end of it I came across this sign. I knew the park had made the popular Kilauea Iki Trail one way, but I hadn’t known about it applying to any other trails.
As you might have guessed, I arrived at this spot from the pointy end of the arrow. I’d hiked the trail in the wrong direction. The problem was that there was nothing at the other end of the trail letting me know I shouldn’t enter. When I hiked Kilauea Iki later, it was the same: at the parking lot there was a sign saying hike this way, but nothing at the other entrances to the trail.
On my way out of the park I stopped at the entrance and mentioned this to the ranger on duty. When I returned to the park in August, I asked the ranger at the entrance if they were still doing one way traffic on some of the trails. She said they weren’t. I wasn’t surprised. To do it properly, it would require a lot of signage and, with the Visitor Center closed, it would be hard to get the message across to everyone who visits the park.
For more information about Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, go to nps.gov/havo/.
Behind the beach at Anaeho’omalu Bay are two fishponds, Kahapapa and Ku’uali’i. These ponds are typical of the kind that form behind a beach, which protects them from the ocean waves. The ponds are connected to the ocean by this channel, which allows was to come and go with the tides. A sluice gate was used to prevent fish using the channel as an escape route.
Where natural ponds weren’t available, they were created by enclosing areas with rock walls. I featured one such fishpond here.
In Hawaiian history, fishponds were very important. In such an isolated community it was important to have reliable food supplies. The ponds provided this, supplementing fish caught in the ocean. Many ponds have disappeared due to development, volcanic activity, tsunami, and the like. But the ones that survive are a bit of living history, used now more for education than for food.
For more information about Hawaiian fishponds go here.
This northern cardinal family set up home in the yard for a while. Above is the proud father. Next is the attentive mother. Finally there’s junior, looking, as offspring often do, like he might belong to a different species.
At Upolu Airport, where I go walking a lot, there’s a mock orange hedge with a passion vine running through it. I check this hedge to see what’s happening on it and lately, it’s been overrun by flies. I don’t know why this is, but I wasn’t surprised when I noticed two praying mantises stationed in the hedge. They were having a field day.
The flies would flit around as flies do, but when one settled, a mantis would strike. Their success rate was quite high, but the flies were easy targets. The safest place to be was on one of the mantises, but that wasn’t a long term solution.
The scene remained the same over three or four days, and then, though the flies were still around, the mantises disappeared. I guess that’s understandable. I mean, how many flies do you think you could eat before you’d start looking for something different?
Graham's Island 