In Hawaii, a pu’u is a hill. These are old cinder cones that dot the landscape from the coast to the top of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.
Along Old Saddle Road, the land and it’s pu’us are grass-covered. This pastureland is cattle, horse, and sheep country, with a lot of goats thrown in for good measure. The land is steep and and rough and the grass varied, but the rainfall is heavy enough that there’s a lot of it.
Old Saddle Road is one of my favorite drives on the island, particularly in the early morning (above) and late afternoon (below).
Posted in response to Friendly Friday challenge theme of ‘Splendour in the Grass.’ See more responses here.
Halemaumau Crater, at the summit of Kiluaea Volcano, underwent profound changes during the 2018 eruption. When lava drained from the summit vent, the crater floor experienced a series of collapses, radically changing the appearance of the crater and its surrounds.
I had seen this area from the air and posted about it (here). The middle photo was taken during that flight and shows where a section of Crater Rim Drive slid into the crater. When I last visited the park, I got a different view of this.
The recently reopened Byron Ledge Trail has good views across the crater. In the top photo, the chunk of road is clearly visible with its white line running down the middle of it. The bottom photo shows the longer view across the crater with the road in the distance. In the center of the photo, equipment used to monitor the volcano’s activity, can be seen. The tree in the foreground is an ‘ōhi‘a lehua with its brilliant red flowers. It’s an early colonizer of new lava flows and all those little dark spots on the main crater floor are ‘ōhi‘a lehua trees, mostly still shrub-sized at this time.
No prizes for guessing who the owner of this truck will vote for, assuming he’s still alive. Trump might be the first president actively seeking to kill his most ardent supporters, by urging them to gather in groups and protest measures that help keep them alive.
Planes gathered at Upolu Airport, on the northern tip of the Big Island, for a fly-in.
Why would anyone want to bomb Upolu Airport, a lightly used airstrip at the northern tip of the island, which is where I go walking because of the peace and quiet? That’s what I wondered when I went down there on Saturday and found 20-plus aircraft, cars parked alongside the road, and a lot of people milling around. Turns out, a group of aviation enthusiasts had organized a fly-in and I’d stumbled on it en route to my walk.
There were planes parked, planes circling above, planes zipping by a whisker above the ground. Apart from the general milling around, a couple of events were scheduled. The first was a touch and go challenge where the goal was to touch as close as possible in front of a line across the runway. Touch down after the line and it counted for nought.
The other event was the bombing run. By the time that rolled around, I’d walked around to the other side of the runway and was leaning on a fence chatting to a couple of airport maintenance workers. The target circle for the bombing challenge, which involved bags of flour rather than high explosives, was not far from where I was so I decided to wait for it to play out, which took rather longer than I anticipated.
What I was hoping for was large bags of flour being dropped from a decent height and exploding in a large white cloud. Instead the bags were small and dropped from just a few feet above the ground as the planes flew by very low indeed. I don’t think the exercise even broke a bag, let alone throwing up a cloud of flour.
Still, it appeared that a good time was had by all, and while my walk got a zero on the peace and quiet scale, it got high marks for being, as they used to say on Monty Python, something completely different.
One of the planes makes a low pass over the airport.A plane makes a touch-and-go landing, attempting to get as close to the line across the runway as possible.One of the planes making a low pass for a bombing run. The bomb, a small bag of flour, can be seen just behind the rearmost wheel.Another plane on a bombing run. The ‘flour bomb’ can be seen behind the plane.
The blackstripe coris, also known as the yellowstripe coris, is an endemic wrasse. According to my fish book, John P. Hoover’s The Ultimate Guide to Hawaiian Reef Fishes, Sea Turtles, Dolphins, Whales, and Seals, it’s most abundant around the northwestern islands of the Hawaii chain. Around the main islands, mature females are uncommon and males rare.
The fish in the top photo is a large male. It has no black stripes, yellow stripes, or stripes of any kind, because this is one of those species where the male and female look radically different. This male was sparkling green in a variety of patterns. The other photo shows a female, which gives a better idea of why the fish got its name.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘From Your Window.’ See more responses here.
There’s a very large mango tree in the yard, which is an erratic producer of fruit. Some years, there’s not much. Other years, the tree looks like an overdecorated Christmas tree. In those times, it’s best not to spend much time under the tree, particularly when it’s windy, because the thud of fruit hitting the ground is frequent (though, standing under that tree is risky any time, since large branches are prone to breaking off).
When fruit does start to fall, wild pigs move in. There are always windfalls available and the pigs love this easily-accessed treat. The pig population around here varies, mostly depending on whether hunters are active in the area. Pigs are nocturnal, so do most of their foraging at night, but the younger ones are more likely to venture out in daylight hours, either because they haven’t yet learned how dangerous that is, or because it’s harder for them to get a look-in when the big pigs are around.
This year, there have been as many as nine pigs in the yard at one time, but this younger pig was out by itself. As there were quite a few mangos on the ground, it was being quite choosy as to which ones to eat. Hard ones will be shunned, unless that’s all there is. This mango was just right, and the pig was tucking in until something disturbed it and it ran off, but not without its prize.
Mostly the pigs are a source of entertainment and don’t bother me. The exception is when they roam past the bedroom window in the middle of the night and get into arguments, grunting and squealing. They also have a very ripe smell, which drifts in through the open window. Fortunately, they’re easy to disperse. I just do my large, angry dog impersonation, consisting of a few loud barks, and they disappear like they’ve been shot out of a cannon.
The top photo shows a Japanese white-eye chick clinging to a window screen. This was the first view I had of this bird, but from inside. When I went out to look there was quite a kerfuffle going on. The white-eyes were squawking in the bushes and flitting around.
After a while, the chick hopped off the screen onto the grass where the two parents, I presume, flew down to join it (middle photo). The squawking continued. Eventually the chick took to the air again and wobbled over to a nearby hedge where it clunked into the branches and gained a perch. The other white-eyes continued to flit around, making quite a din.
The chick moved a couple more times, tentatively, but must have landed somewhere safe because the hubbub subsided and calm returned to the yard. It must have been old enough to fly, but not yet adept at it so that it could control where the flight might take it.
In the bottom photo, taken while it was resting in the grass, the chick looks quite similar to the adults, but the signature white eye ring is not yet present.
A rainbow arcs over a small red and white flag floating in the water. This flag is used in North America to indicate that there’s a diver or divers below and that boats should stay clear.
Graham's Island 