There are many things to like about this orchid. It’s a beautiful flower. It’s an epiphyte, growing on the trunk of a tree. It hosts a small hover fly, which I didn’t notice at the time. And it has a handy tag attached, identifying what it is, which I also didn’t see until later.
There’s an interesting story about the discovery of this flower here.
A Monarch Butterfly caterpillar munches along the edges of an Hawaiian Crown Flower (Calotropis gigantea).
I spotted this dragonfly perched on a dead twig, and it was nice enough to stick around long enough for a photo or two.
This Large Orange Sulphur Butterfly blends in rather well amongst these Plumeria flowers. I didn’t see it feeding here, but that likely was its intention.
The house where I live is ready for Halloween thanks to the generous numbers of spiders living around it. By the front steps, there’s a small Hawaiian Garden Spider and several crab spiders.
One day, I came home and saw a wasp flying close to the various webs. I thought it was dicing with danger, but soon saw that wasn’t the case. Instead, it would approach a web and bob its head toward the spider. It didn’t seem to be a terribly threatening act, though perhaps it was from the spiders perspective. The wasp didn’t push home an attack, but would instead fly away, settle for a bit, and preen itself.
The garden spider didn’t seemed to be bothered by the attention, but the crab spiders would drop suddenly on a strand of silk, before returning to their web as soon as the wasp moved on. I watched these maneuvers for five or ten minutes before heading inside. No webs were damaged, no spiders hurt, and I still don’t know what was really going on!
A bee lands on an endemic Maiapilo flower before working its way up to collect pollen.
This month’s Sunday Stills color challenge theme is ‘Orange and Gold.’ See more responses here. First up is a very orange Passion Vine Butterfly taking a break.
Next, orange is the official color of the island of Lanai, represented here at this year’s Kamehameha Day celebrations.
When I was putting this post together a few days ago, I thought a sunset photo would be a nice way to wrap it up. I trolled through my files before picking a suitable one out, and was on the verge of processing it, when I happened to glance out of the window and saw this developing. Another reminder to live in the present and not the past!
I found this Hawaiian Crown Flower (Calotropis gigantea) occupied by a Variable Lady Beetle, which gives a good idea of how small the flower is.
