Tag Archives: Eagle Rays

Here comes trouble

Two Black-crowned Night Herons hunting in a pond in Hawaii

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

A pair of juvenile Black-crowned Night Herons spell trouble for small fish living in the pool behind Pelekane Beach in Kawaihae.

A pair of giant porcupinefish in the waters off Hawaii

Giant Porcupinefish can inflate themselves into a ball. When they do so, long spines along the back become raised and stick out, making them an extremely unpleasant proposition for any predator. Oh, and they’re poisonous, too. Trouble, indeed.

two spotted eagle rays hunting in the waters off Hawaii

Spotted Eagle Rays hunt for molluscs and other creatures hiding in the sand. They root out prey with their duck-like bills.

Wild pigs can dig up a garden in no time, searching for worms and the like, but they go bananas over fallen fruit. These two were slurping down fallen mangoes.

This cow looked very suspicious of these cattle egrets, especially the one on its back. But they weren’t up to any trouble, just waiting for the cow to start grazing again and stir up some insects for them.

Two Gold Dust Day Geckos in a territorial dispute in Hawaii

The Gold Dust Day Gecko on the left isn’t licking the paint. He’s sticking out his tongue and leaning to make his body look bigger in a challenge to the other gecko. The other one was singularly unimpressed and chased off his adversary.

Spotted Eagle Ray on the move

A Spotted Eagle ray and yellow tangs in the waters off hawaii

I don’t see Spotted Eagle Rays as often as I used to, but that’s true of many creatures that live in the ocean around here. This one went skimming by a small school of Yellow Tangs and out into deeper water. Happily, it looked in excellent condition with a beautiful array of white spots on its wings.

A Spotted Eagle ray in the waters off Hawaii

Small spotted eagle ray

A few days ago, returning from a swim, I ran into this little eagle ray not far from shore. It’s probably the smallest one I’ve seen, with a wingspan of not more than two feet. But what really jumped out at me was it’s small beak, long tail, and clear white eyes. I hadn’t seen eyes like that before.

The ray looked in very good shape, which is always good to see. Some of them look like they’ve been in the wars. Like most rays, eagle rays have poisonous spines at the base of their tail so, as with most things in the water, it’s best to look but don’t touch.

Posted in response to Becky’s October Squares challenge theme of ‘Past Squares – Spiky.’ See more responses here.

Another spotted eagle ray encounter

A spotted eagle ray swims in the waters off the Big Island, Hawaii

Last week, I posted about an encounter with three spotted eagle rays (here). A few days after that I ran into one of the small eagle rays a little farther up the coast. The visibility wasn’t good – those pink spots are small organisms floating in the water – but the ray came so close that I was able to get a few photos. I’m pretty sure this was the same one that was so curious on the first encounter. This time it didn’t hang around but drifted by, disappearing into the murky water.

A family outing?

Three spotted eagle rays in the waters off Hawaii

On a recent snorkeling outing, my wife and I hadn’t gone far when we saw these three spotted eagle rays cruising around. The one was bigger than the other two and I wondered if this was a family group.

The three went back and forth before disappearing in the direction we’d come from. Or rather two of them did. The third, the smallest of the three, looped around a few times and seemed keen to demonstrate just how quickly it could turn and swoop and soar. Eventually, it followed the others.

We swam a little farther, then turned and headed back. It wasn’t long before we ran into the two juvenile rays again. Both were zipping around, carving turns, dipping down and rocketing up. Again, the smallest one was the most demonstrative and I got the feeling it was just having a ripping good time, practicing its acrobatics.

But it was also clearly quite curious. A couple of times it came straight up to me and I could see it looking at me, probably wondering what this cumbersome creature was in the water. I like to think I helped confirm its own superior swimming skills as I splashed my way back to the shore.

Morning swim

A spotted eagle ray swims in the waters off Hawaii — Spotted eagle ray swimming

A spotted eagle ray hunts in the waters off Hawaii — Spotted eagle ray hunting

On a morning swim with my wife a couple of days ago, we were lucky enough to see a spotted eagle ray cruising around looking for breakfast. It stopped often, to probe the sand and rocks for food, and was successful at least once, since it emerged from its efforts chewing and swallowing. This eagle ray looked a bit battered, with damage to its tail fins and a chunk missing from its right wing, but it didn’t seem to be affected by this at all.

As we continued swimming, I saw the ray heading the same way. For a while it followed us, got ahead, then we followed it. On the way we saw a couple of flowery flounders, a couple of day octopuses, a crowned jellyfish as roughed up as the ray, and an oriental flying gurnard. It’s not a great photo of that, but it’s the first one I’ve seen here.

An Oriental Flying Gurnard in the waters off Hawaii — Oriental flying gurnard

A crowned jellyfish in the waters off Hawaii — Oriental flying gurnard

Near the spot where we planned to turn around and head back, I passed over a hole in the rocks and, glancing down, saw the distinctive shape and colors of a green turtle. I think it must have chosen this spot to take a rest, but my appearance startled it and it clambered out of the hole and swam away.

Shortly after that, the turtle encountered the eagle ray. The two of them crossed paths a couple of times before going their separate ways.

A Green turtle and spotted Eagle Ray in the waters off Hawaii

A spotted eagle ray passes below

A spotted eagle ray swims off the Big Island, Hawaii

I hadn’t seen a spotted eagle ray in quite some time before I saw this one, hunting in deeper water. It looked in very good condition and had a fine array of spots.

Spotted eagle ray before and after

This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Two Ways,’ the idea being to show a photo processed in different ways or to show two photos of the same thing taken at different times in different conditions. (See more responses here.)

I’ve gone with a photo taken yesterday morning showing it before and after processing. In the water, I use a basic point-and-shoot camera in a waterproof case. I don’t use lights or a flash so I shoot mainly on auto, because if my big fingers started pushing little buttons, my subject would be halfway to Japan before I got a photo. This approach can lead to some erratic results, including the image appearing somewhat murky, but usually this can be cleaned up during processing. On this day, the visibility in the water was cloudy, but not as bad as it looks in the before photo.

For photo processing, I use an older version of Photoshop Express (PE), which is a stripped-down version of Photoshop. Using the full version would be like me driving a Ferrari to the local store – way more power and features than I need. My version of PE has a ‘haze reduction’ feature, which is a sort of automatic one-stop processing step, but I prefer to do my own adjustments.

While the two versions look quite a bit different, the change is mainly down to simple adjustments in ‘shadows and highlights’ and tweaking the tones and colors in ‘levels.’ Besides that, I removed a few of the little red flares that often occur in these underwater images, and bumped up the sharpness a hair. That’s it.

Since I follow the same routine when processing all my photos, it goes very quickly. This one was all done in 5 minutes, and the result was worth it.

Graham's Island

Life on the Big Island of Hawaii