This Phalaenopsis Minho Princess orchid was one of many varieties of orchid that can be found at the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden north of Hilo on the east side of the Big Island. For more information about Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, go to htbg.com.
A green anole surveys the scene from a raindrop covered ti leaf.
’Aimakapa Fishpond, in Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park, is a good place to see the endemic Hawaiian stilt. Mostly they’re seen wading in the shallows, probing the mud with their long beaks. On this day, however, they took to the air.
I enjoy taking photos of birds in flight, but it’s a challenge. Challenge number one is getting them in the frame. Then there’s the small matter of tracking them and getting settings right. I’m constantly experimenting with the best way to get the picture. Usually I find that by the time I’m organized they disappear behind some trees or settle down again on the flats.
This time the birds were unusually cooperative. They headed out over the water, circled back and returned from whence they came. And they did this more than once so I was able to get a bit of practice in.
I do like seeing birds shot, photographically speaking, against a clear blue sky, particularly the stilts with those long, pink legs. But I also like the context of the water and greenery surrounding the fishpond. I don’t know what the white birds are as this fleeting pass was as good a look as I got. They might be some kind of gull, though gulls aren’t especially common in Hawaii.
For more information about Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park, go to nps.gov/kaho/index.htm.
Many times when I travel on Old Saddle Road, there comes a point where I’m exiting the clouds or disappearing into them. I like to take photos in this zone, experimenting as the level of the clouds comes and goes.
The top photo has that transition from clouds to clarity, but I also like the ethereal quality of the lower photo as patches of sun illuminate the pastures below.
A green turtle takes on a different appearance as it swims through the waters of Kiholo Bay. The original photo (above) already has an impressionistic look, but I experimented with a few effects and quite like the subtle difference of the posterized version below.
This little arrangement sprouted up in a cow pasture, beside the road to Upolu Airport, over the course of a week of so. It’s quite substantial with three new poles, fencing, and a gate having been put in, but the equipment itself is on wheels.
I was curious as to its purpose and finally happened by while workmen were there. As the title says, it’s a temporary substation. It’s been installed so that changes in the local distribution network can be achieved without power shutdowns. Supposedly, it will be in operation for two or three weeks, then the poles, fences, and equipment will be removed and the cows will get their pasture back.
A praying mantis that I saw wandering around on the rocks at the coast, and not rocks close to the cliff, but out near the water’s edge and likely to be inundated soon. I never saw if it returned safely to dry land.
The weather here is governed by the northeast trade winds. These bring abundant moisture to the windward side of Big Island, but the western side, in the lee of the volcanoes, is mostly hot and dry. There are local variations, and different times of the year can bring different winds. During the summer, Kona winds, blowing from the south or southwest, reverse the usual pattern.
Then there are weather systems which upset all the norms. Hurricanes are the most obvious. This year, in dramatic contrast to the Atlantic and Caribbean areas, there has been virtually no action in the Central Pacific. Only a couple of storms headed in this general direction and both petered out well before they reached the islands.
From time to time, an unstable air mass will pass over the state bringing with it unsettled weather and thunderstorms. One of the biggest dangers with such systems is when a storm cell settles over an area, dumping many inches of water, and sometimes generating flash floods. It’s interesting to follow these on the weather radar. The storm cells show up red, orange, and yellow. Sometimes they’re big enough to blanket an entire island.
One such system passed through the islands recently. Thunder had rumbled through the night, with distant lightning illuminating the sky. Next morning, I checked the radar and saw large areas of red and orange slowly working their way southeast, toward the Big Island. Then I noticed a little ball of orange appear and start to grow close to where I live. That online apparition was matched by an increase in the thunder’s volume and by the lightning becoming distinct strikes.
Very quickly, a cell built up that hung over this area for a couple of hours. It was quite the show. Three times the disturbance was so close overhead that I heard the crack of the lightning followed instantly by a clap of thunder that shook the house. Through it all, the rain hammered down, which I tried to capture in these photos.
Eventually, the large cell moving down from the northwest arrived, but instead of making things worse, it absorbed our local fireworks show and carried on to inundate areas to the southeast. An hour later, the sun broke through and our temporary weather maelstrom was over.
