A passion vine butterfly drinks sweet nectar from a tasselflower. I think it’s a Florida tasselflower (Emilia fosbergii), which is also known as Flora’s paintbrush.
Category Archives: Animals
Gold dust day gecko on a bird of paradise
This week’s posts are on the theme of the WordPress photo challenge, ‘Tour Guide.’
Today’s photo features a couple of tropical standbys, a gold dust day gecko getting ready to take a drink from a bird of paradise flower. The flower is a riot of color and the gecko, also very colorful, is bold and cheerful. Most visitors are likely to encounter at least one, glued to a wall or ceiling, watching them with a somewhat bemused expression.
Painted lady butterfly
The painted lady butterfly is one of the most common butterflies in the world, but it’s only recently that I’ve spotted a few of them in Hawaii. This isn’t because they’re a recent introduction. They’ve been around here since the late 1800s. I guess I just haven’t been visiting the right areas.
Here’s looking at you, katydid
I noticed this katydid on the outside of a window and hurried to take a photo. There are a couple of things I like about this photo.
One is that it reminds me that it’s good to look at things from a different perspective now and then. The other is that it reminds me I really, really need to wash the windows.
Green anole silhouette
A green anole pauses in a patch of sunlight on a ti leaf.
White-lined sphinx moth
Another post based on the theme of this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge, which is ‘Silence.’
I glimpsed this moth flitting by and snapped a couple of photos, one of which is the second shot. I realized this wasn’t something I’d seen before and wanted to get more photos to make identifying it easier, but it had gone to ground and I’d lost track of it. So I waited, scanning the ground without spotting anything. A light breeze ruffled the grass, but otherwise all was silence.
Eventually, having seen no sign of its presence, I gave up, got up and moved on. Within seconds the moth flew by again. This time I followed its flight and saw where it put down. Even then, as I padded towards it, I thought I’d lost it again. But when I zoomed in on the apparently empty spot, the moth appeared, as seen above. No chance I’m spotting this had I not seen it flying.
It’s a white-lined sphinx moth, first recorded in Hawaii in 1877 and now present on all the islands. It’s probably fairly common but it’s the first time I’ve seen one.
Spider web
I liked the way the sun caught this spider web. That’s a crab spider sitting in the middle, waiting for good things to happen.
A gecko soaks up the sun
A gold dust day gecko soaks up early morning sunlight on a leaf of an agave plant. It’s a common sight to see geckos and anoles warming themselves in this way as they get a start on their day.
Graham's Island 