Golden penda (Xanthostemon chrysanthus) is a member of the myrtle family and native to Queensland, Australia. Though it can grow to 50 feet high, it’s generally kept more compact in domestic gardens, where it’s grown for its showy yellow flowers.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Lights.’ See more responses here.
I ventured out into the chill Hawaiian night to see what kind of displays the area had to offer. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, despite the difficult circumstances, many people had hauled their lights out and illuminated their properties.
In the end though, I was taken by the window display at the Old Hawaiian Trading Company in Kapaau. I mean, who doesn’t like lights that flash on and off in different colors? People susceptible to seizures perhaps, but let’s not dwell on that. They worked for me. I’m a sucker for shiny things and blinking lights.
Last week, my neighbors were doing some clearing around the edge of their property. Those kids sure got a lot done.
This varicose phyllidia is a small nudibranch, which I saw several times over the course of a week or so. Apart from being a lot smaller than the clumpy nudibranchs I saw a couple of months back, the varicose phyllidia has gills under the mantle skirt rather than in an exposed, wavy clump.
This one was two to three inches long. In the middle photo, the tiny white-spotted toby and small brown surgeonfish give a sense of scale.
I saw these two horses in Waimea, near the Parker Ranch headquarters. Nothing remarkable about them, but I’m pretty sure that brown lump in the grass is a third horse. I mention this because one of the early things I learned about horses is that they sleep standing up. They can do this because they have something called the stay apparatus, which locks the knees so they don’t fall over. The benefit of sleeping while standing is that they can respond quicker to a predator attack from that position.
While I learned this bit about horses, it didn’t register in the same way that horses will also lie down to sleep. As a result, every single time I see a horse lying stretched out in the grass the way they do, I think it’s dead or dying. Despite knowing better, this response seems to so ingrained in me that I doubt it will ever go away.
Looking down from the Kohala Mountain Road, the lush, green pastureland of the hillside contrasts with the dry, brown landscape of the South Kohala coast.
A couple of days ago, I saw an octopus while snorkeling. It was on a vertical face of rock and when I showed up it slipped around the corner out of sight. I followed and could see it had gone into a recess there. I saw a tentacle moving and then, moments later, a round white thing appeared, a tentacle clasped around it.
I was mystified. I thought it might be the remains of an urchin or something. The white globe disappeared back into the depths. Moments later it appeared out of the side of the recess and it quickly became clear that the round white balloon was the head of another, completely white octopus. This white coloration is adopted when an octopus is feeling aggressive or threatened.
After a brief flurry of tentacles the white octopus disengaged, shot away a short distance, and changed color again as it landed on a rock. The octopus I’d first seen appeared again at the entrance of the recess. There was a little more to and fro before the evicted octopus gave up and moved away and the first octopus slipped back into the depths of the recess. My take on this was that the octopus I saw first wasn’t happy to find the other octopus in its lair and turfed it out.
The top photo shows the evicted octopus gathering itself after being run off. The second photo shows it on the move, still with the white coloration. The third photo shows the victor in the dispute, looking a little smug if I may say so.
I was sitting on the couch when a large, dark shape appeared on the window screen. The bottom photo shows this first view I had of what was clearly a black witch moth. I took my camera outside and shot a few more photos.
Sometimes these moths can look very battered indeed, but this one looked in good shape, if a little faded. It remained in this spot for several hours until an ambitious gecko saw it as a potential banquet. When the gecko got too close, the moth took off.
I’ve seen a gecko go after one of these moths before (here), but I’ve yet to see one succeed in its quest.
Graham's Island 