Signs: Scalding steam

I was rather taken by the vivid graphic on this sign alongside the Sulphur Banks Trail in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. But it illustrates an incident from 1996 when a 10-year-old boy wandered off the trail and his foot went through the crust into a steaming vent leaving him with serious burns. That small, dark hole in the upper left of the photo is one such vent and it was busily steaming away while I read the gory details.

For more information about Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, go to nps.gov/havo/.

Puffed up and angry

A green anole defends its territory in a hedge from an encroaching photographer. A typical display involves a lot of head bobbing and extending of the anole’s dewlap. If the intruder is another anole, the defender might rush the other one, though in my experience, they rarely end up fighting.

When I’m the intruder, the anoles usually have a similar expression to this one, a sort of benign resignation.

Red-crested cardinal

My bird book says that the red-crested cardinal is present on all Hawaii’s islands except the Big Island. That’s no longer the case, as these photos attest.

Adults are similar in appearance, but juveniles, such as the bird in the lower photo, have a brown head and a darker bill. A native of South America, it was introduced to Hawaii in the 1930s.

Auburn orchid

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Auburn.’ See more responses here.

I have to confess that color is not my strong suit, hence some of my clothing choices. So when it came to picking a photo for this theme, I wasn’t sure what color I was looking for. A casual search revealed a lot of different shades loosely covered by that name. In the end, I opted to go with the official RGB color value (165 red, 42 green, 42 blue).

Armed with that information I ditched my original choice of a dirt road, thrilling photo though it is, and opted for this orchid. I’m not sure what kind of orchid it is, but I know for a fact that within those darker areas of the petals are several areas that are officially auburn.