I spotted this dragonfly perched on a dead twig, and it was nice enough to stick around long enough for a photo or two.
Roseate Skimmer Dragonfly
Category Archives: Animals
Three’s company
These two bulls reside in a field beside the road to Upolu Aiport. I’ve never seen them more than six feet apart from each other! The cattle egret was just taking a break on a blustery day and took off soon after I took the photo.
Large Orange Sulphur Butterfly on a Plumeria
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.
Signs: Gecko leaving
This gecko appears to be figuring out exactly how it’s going to get to the Visitor’s Center at Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden. I didn’t wait to find out if it made it.
A bevy of bridges
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Bridges.’ See more responses here.
The top image is an elegant bridge on the coast, in the Hilton Resort at Waikoloa. It spans an inlet from the ocean into a lagoon. This bridge is part of the coast path, which is open for anyone to walk.
The Big Island’s main use of bridges is to span the numerous gullies that run from the mountains down to the ocean. On the east side, some of these bridges are quite long and high, with vertigo-inducing views over the edge. These three bridges cross gullies in North Kohala on the winding road from Kapaau to Pololu. The third has several houses nearby, so a walkway has been added. This is surely safer than walking on the road, though not by much judging from its appearance!
Finally, bridges of a different kind. Anoles and geckos use lines, attached to the house, to get around. Sometimes these one-lane bridges lead to encounters with fellow travelers. In this case the smaller anole leapt off into the cane grass, but that was its intended destination anyway. In the second photo, this anole was using the washing line to bridge the space from the house to a hedge.
Green on green
This green anole didn’t exactly stand out while it climbed the leaf of a snake plant (Dracaena trifasciata).
What’s going on here?
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!
Sneaking up from below
A bee lands on an endemic Maiapilo flower before working its way up to collect pollen.
Graham's Island 