Category Archives: Places

Large orange sulphur butterflies mating

Large Orange Sulphur Butterflies mating

While on a hike south of Pu’uhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park, I saw this pair of large orange sulphur butterflies. They were flying around, joined together, before settling on this seed pod. I assume they were mating, though this discrete view is the only one I had of them.

To see what was going on on the other side would have involved thrashing around in some nasty-looking brush. This would have added to the usual assortment of lacerations that I seem to acquire on a daily basis, and would undoubtedly have caused the butterflies to take to the air again. So I let them be.

Northern pintails

A pair of northern pintails take a dip in a puddle at Upolu Airport. Northern pintails migrate to Hawaii in the winter, in large numbers in former times, but fewer these days.

These are both drakes just starting to molt out of eclipse or juvenile plumage. Alas, they didn’t stick around the area long enough for me to see them in their splendid adult plumage.

Thanks to posters on birdforum.net for the identification and information.

Posted in response to this week’s Sunday Stills challenge on the theme of ‘Tourist.’ See more responses here.

Signs: Green Sand Beach

Near the end of a hike to Papakōlea Beach, better known as Green Sand Beach, there’s this old sign. I think it reads, ‘Welcome to Mahana Bay green sand beach. Please do not take the sand. There is only so much and if everybody that came here takes it, well! soon there will be none. Thank you.’

What I liked was that the only parts that could reasonably be read were, ‘Welcome’ and ‘Thank you.’ The rest I had to decipher with the help of Photoshop when I got home.

Black sand, white pole holders

Fishing pole holders Kona coastKona coast surgeKona coast lava

Between Kailua Kona Airport and Kekaha Kai State Park is a stretch of coastline heavy on lava and aircraft coming in to land, but light on vegetation and people.

There’s a fair smattering of black sand to be found in little coves and one proper black sand beach at Makole’a (below).

In several places, white plastic tubes can be seen wedged or cemented in to the lava (above). They’re fishing pole holders and are a common sight on most of the island’s coastline.

And then there are the usual features of old lava flows by the ocean including blow holes and fractured lava tubes where the ocean surges in and out again (right).

Kona coast black sand beach Makole'a

New calves

New calves and mothers

Three new calvesOn my frequent trips to the coast near Upolu, I pass one of the two dairy farms on the island. As I go by I tend to look out for new calves, which I see quite often. On this day I came across this grouping and stopped to take photos. Actually, there were four new calves in the field, but the fourth was some distance away from this more social cluster.

New calves are quite endearing, especially when they first get up onto their wobbly legs, looking around as if wondering what the heck they’ve got themselves into. I’m also impressed by the mothers. It’s not unusual to see them pushing out their rather large offspring at one end while they continue to graze at the other. What fortitude!

Two new calves

King Kamehameha statues

King Kamehameha statue KapaauKing Kamehameha statue Honolulu

These two photos are of statues of King Kamehameha I, the king who first united the Hawaiian Islands under one leader. On top, draped in leis from last Monday’s Kamehameha Day celebrations, is the statue at Kapaau, here on the Big Island. Below is the statue in Honolulu. It sits in front of the Aliʻiōlani Hale, which housed the government of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and the Republic of Hawaiʻi, and is currently home to the Hawaiʻi State Supreme Court.

Back in 1878, a statue of the King was commissioned for display in Honolulu. The commission was given to American artist Thomas Ridgeway Gould, and in 1880 his plaster model was sent to Paris to be cast, before being shipped to Hawaii. Alas, it never made it. The ship transporting the statue caught fire and sank off of the Falkland Islands.

Fortunately, the statue was insured, so a replacement was ordered. While this process was underway, the original statue turned up! Salvaged by fishermen, it was sold to a British ship captain who recognized it. He, in turn, sold it to the Hawaiian government, which now found itself in possession of identical twin statues. But the statues weren’t identical. The replacement statue was pristine and resplendent with gold detailing. The original was missing a hand and had a broken spear, and had suffered a good deal of fire damage.

The government decided to erect the replacement statue in Honolulu and the original was restored and sent to Kapaau, near Kamehameha’s birthplace. However, the original was corroded from its time in the sea so, in the early 1900s, local residents began to paint the statue, both to prevent further corrosion and to make it more lifelike.

By the end of the century, the statue was in bad shape and in 1996 conservator Glenn Wharton was hired to assess its condition. In his book, The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawaii, he recalls being startled by what he found, ‘A larger-than-life brass figure painted over in brown, black, and yellow with “white toenails and fingernails and penetrating black eyes with small white brush strokes for highlights. . . . It looked more like a piece of folk art than a nineteenth-century heroic monument.”’

For the next few years Wharton led a community discussion about how to save the statue, including the tricky question of whether it should be restored to its original bronze and gold finish or continue the painted alternative the community had grown up with. In the end the community voted to keep the painted finish and in 2001 the statue was restored in this way and rededicated.

A third statue of King Kamehameha I was commissioned after statehood in 1959, for installation in the U.S. Statuary Hall in Washington DC. However, this statue wasn’t cast from the original molds, but from molds taken of the Honolulu statue.

Posted in response to this week’s Sunday Stills challenge on the theme of ‘Twin.’ See more responses here.

Now you see it …

Hualalai from water

Hualalai from the water with vogOver the last few weeks, several people have asked me how I’ve been affected by Kilauea Volcano’s latest eruption in a subdivision in Puna. I’ve been happy to respond that, where I live, I’ve hardly been affected at all.

I live near the northern tip of the Big Island and the current eruption is taking place in the southeast corner of the island. This eruption is also not like the recent one in Guatemala, with a deadly explosive element. Instead, it has settled into a steady, if prolific stream of molten lava, burning buildings in its path on the way to the coast. This behavior makes the direct impact of the eruption a more localized affair. If a person lived in the vicinity of the lava flow path, they’ve probably been forced to leave their home with no indication of when they might be able to return. But for the rest of the island, the lava itself poses no threat. What does affect, not only this island, but also others in the Hawaiian chain, is vog.

Vog, a blend of the words ‘volcanic,’ ‘smog,’ and ‘fog,’ is the result of gases from an eruption reacting with moisture and sunlight. It varies in intensity depending on the output of the volcano and it varies in who it affects depending on the wind.

Vog has been around a while, since the volcano has been erupting, pretty much continuously, since 1983. That 1983 eruption was at the Pu’u O’o vent. Then, in 2008, a new vent opened in Halemaʻumaʻu Crater, within the summit caldera. With two active vents, the vog got noticeably worse. This year’s new eruption has added to the output and also thrown in some ash deposits on areas within range.

The northeast trades are the dominant winds here and when they blow, the vog is blown along the south coast of the Big Island and then up along the west coast. Typically it will reach Kailua Kona, about halfway up, or a little farther north.

Up here on the northern tip the trades blow strong, too strong for many people who find it too windy. But the advantage of those winds is that they keep the vog at bay. Ironically, this past winter, the winds were more variable and we had more vog up here than usual. But since this current vent opened, the trades have been fairly consistent and have kept this part of the island mostly vog free.

Yesterday was an exception. The winds weakened and the vog crept north, which is what the photos are about. The top one, I’ve run before. It shows Hualalai Volcano seen from the water off the north Kohala coast. The bottom photo was taken yesterday from roughly the same area (though without zooming in). Hualalai is gone! That headland is about 400 yards away and I’d estimate that visibility was around 2 miles. I couldn’t even see the horizon. The water just faded away into the vog.

Even when it’s voggy, it doesn’t bother me too much, but some people are more affected. The air becomes acrid and sore throats and noses are common. Luckily, the winds picked up during the day and conditions improved, so we’ll see what happens.