Category Archives: Plants

Bees on an agave flower

I’ve posted about agave attenuata before, in January of last year (here). The plants are blooming again and, once again, the bees are all over them. This year I wanted to focus on the bees in flight, just before they settled on the flowers to forage. This resulted in a fair number of bees buzzing around my head, but I worry less about that than I used to. I took a lot of photos, most of which were free of bees, or featured bee blurs.

These were a couple of my favorites, each capturing a bee just before plunging into the bounty within.

Gold dust day gecko on a torch ginger

There is no Sunday Stills challenge this week (or next), but the theme was going to be ‘Something Red or Green or Both!’ so I thought I’d go with the photo I had picked out for that anyway.

So here’s a very green (with red markings) gold dust day gecko resting atop a very red torch ginger surrounded by green foliage. It looks like the gecko has been in the wars judging from the rings around its tail, which suggest it has lost it a few times. The most recent regrowth is the lower brown part, which will ultimately take on a matching green color once it’s fully grown.

I’iwi

I saw this I’iwi (Drepanis coccinea) on a trail off of Saddle Road, between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. These bright red birds are native Hawaiian honeycreepers and in the old days, the feathers of the birds were collected to make cloaks for Hawaiian royalty.

The curved bill is suited for feeding on native lobelias, but a decline in those plants has seen the I’iwi adapt to feeding on other native plants including ʻōhiʻa lehua, māmane, and ohelo.

While the numbers of I’iwi are still fairly good, particularly on the Big Island and Maui, they have suffered, like other birds, from loss of habitat. In addition, They are susceptible to avian malaria, spread by mosquitoes. Consequently, I’iwi are doing better at higher elevations, such as where this photo was taken at around 6,000 feet.