I first saw this chicken on the way to work a couple of weeks ago. It was pecking around at the foot of the hill below where I work. Since this is in one of the Kohala coast resorts, I thought the chicken might be removed with some speed. This hasn’t happened.
Last week, leaving work, I saw it again and stopped to take photos. The chicken immediately headed my way, then stopped, moved away, turned, and came back. I wondered what it was up to.
It wasn’t until I got home and processed the photos that I realized that there was a perfectly reasonably explanation. It was just doing the funky chicken!
There are three kinds of francolins that can be found in Hawaii. In the 10 years I’ve lived here I’ve seen and photographed lots of Gray Francolins, the most common and loudest of the bunch. I’ve also got several photos of Erckel’s Francolins, which are noticeably larger than the other two. But though I’ve seen a fair number of Black Francolins, which have distinctive markings, I’ve never got a photo of one before.
It’s not that they’re rare – I see them fairly regularly – but I only ever seem to see them while I’m driving. By the time I stop the car, grab the camera, and get out, the francolin is long gone.
But last week, while I was at work, I looked out of the window and saw this bird ambling across what passes for a lawn here. I snagged my camera, ran outside and started taking photos. In the top one, the bird is about to leave the open area and head into scrubby grassland. It gave me the eye at a couple of points, and then headed away and out of sight. And, yes, the brown stalks are grass. This area gets very little rainfall, and it’s been exceptionally dry here as well.
Recently, I was down at the lagoon behind the beach at Pelekane Bay in Kawaihae. I was engaged in one of my favorite activities – failing to get photos of dragonflies in flight!
When I heard a loud plop behind me, I turned to find this scene. This Black-crowned Night Heron had dropped into the algae-covered water, probably after a fish. I don’t think it caught anything, but when it popped up again it sported a rather fetching green hairdo. Even after it had shed that, it still found the process of getting out of the water was hard going, with a lot of flapping and splashing producing little result.
Eventually the bird reached dry land and resumed a watchful pose, apparently none the worse for its ordeal.
For Bushboy’s Last on the Card challenge (see more responses here), I had to hunt a bit for the last photo I took. Turned out it was almost a week ago, when I was walking on the coast. The top photo is the last one, unedited. The one below is the next to last, cropped and edited a bit.
This was one of those occasions when I noticed the bird before it reached me, something of an uncommon occurrence in my experience.
When I returned to my car after a visit to the post office, this young myna bird landed nearby. It started out on two legs, then one, then plunked down to wait. I think it was looking for its parents to deliver food. They were probably waiting for me to depart. This might be a young bird, but it’s clearly mastered the myna bird scowl.
Sometimes, when I’m walking along the coast, the first thing that alerts me to the presence of a bird is its shadow passing over me. This happened again a few days ago and I glanced up to see this White-tailed Tropicbird practically over my head and not by very much. By the time I wrestled my camera out the bird had glided out over the water and away. I watched it receding and put my camera away.
Moments later, I realized the bird was riding the wind back in my direction. I whisked my camera out and started doing pirouettes as it skimmed closer and turned again when overhead. Again it slid away towards the water. It repeated this maneuver two or three times before heading into the wind and out of sight.
I put my camera away again, hoping I had some good shots, and carried on with my walk. About a half mile father on, a shadow passed over me. I looked up and there was the bird again. I assumed it was the same one, and had snuck behind me while I wasn’t looking. This time the bird drifted out into the channel and disappeared towards Maui. These photos are from that encounter.
The next day, walking in the same area, I kept a watchful eye out for a reappearance, but didn’t see a thing … until a shadow passed over me. There it was again. This time the bird kept going and I didn’t even try to take a photo. It disappeared from view. A couple of minutes later, another shadow passed over. This was a different bird, following the first, so perhaps the day before had also been two birds.
I see these graceful birds once in awhile on my walks in this area, but I think large numbers of them can be found farther along the coast between Pololu and Waipio, nesting on the cliffs.
This bird looked a bit forlorn when it landed on an outdoor shower at Spencer Beach Park. I think it was just looking for a drink of water, though there were alternatives not far away.
I was surprised to see this House Sparrow feeding on this bottlebrush flower. I usually see them snapping up fallen food at outdoor restaurants or squabbling over bird seed thrown out by sympathizers.
