At Upolu Airport, there’s a mock orange hedge and through it grows a passion vine. The hedge used to be trimmed once in a while, but the flowers attracted to all kinds of insects and was teeming with life. Passion Vine Butterflies laid eggs there and their caterpillars ran amok munching on leaves.
These days the hedge is kept trimmed and is the poorer for it. It’s basically lifeless. I see the odd butterfly, an occasional caterpillar and that’s it. So Passion Vine Butterflies, which I used to see all the time, have thinned out considerably in that area. However, I did spot this one feeding on Blue Heliotrope flowers not too far away.
Heading down for my walk at Upolu, I saw this cow on the loose. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence, but the main road is a mile up the hill and the escapees rarely get that far.
This one gave me a suspicious look as she passed. Perhaps she was trying to get rid of the ever-present cluster of flies on her back!
In last week’s Sunday Stills, Terri included a photo of a bald eagle with a transmitter on its back. In the comments, I mentioned that those trackers don’t stay on that long. Cue a few days ago when I saw this nene at Upolu. When I see nenes at Upolu, I report them to a contact at the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DNLR). The DNLR uses sighting information to build a picture of where the nenes are and where they go.
This is 32A, a bird I first saw in January of 2020. Back then, he didn’t have a tracker, but shortly after I saw him, one was attached. The DNLR thought the bird might be flying to and from Maui, but it turns out he wasn’t. Instead, the tracker has shown he mostly flies between Upolu, Hakalau, and Mauna Kea, all on the Big Island. However, the tracker is still on and still working, and I learned that they generally work for 3 to 5 years.
The reason I know this bird is 32A, besides the tracker, is that many nenes have bands on their legs to help with identification. In the second photo, the bands can be seen at grass level. The smaller band, on the left leg, is a US Fish and Wildlife tag. I’ve never been able to see any information on this smaller tag on any of the birds I’ve seen. The tag on the right leg is actually gray and shows the bird is one of almost 600 birds that were moved to the Big Island from a golf course near Kaua’i airport, between 2011 and 2016. These birds more than doubled the population of Big Island birds at that time. The fact that the tag is on the right leg means the bird is a male. The fact that the tag is brown and barely readable shows this bird has been wading through some very muddy conditions!
I’ve been seeing lots of butterflies around lately, and chief among them are Painted Lady Butterflies. Some I’ve seen when visiting areas I don’t go to often, but even my usual walking route at Upolu, where I rarely used to see them, is all aflutter with them. That’s where I saw this one, feeding off a tasselflower.
The windsock at Upolu Airport with Maui in the background.
This month’s Sunday Stills Color Challenge is ‘Red.’ See more responses here. A variety of subjects for this one!
A Red Pencil Urchin in the shallows off Kohala.The red crest of one of the many chickens roaming free around here.A Northern Cardinal in a tree near the South Kona coast.A slide at a kid’s playground in Waimea.A large buoy on the beach at Kawaihae Harbor with an inter-island barge arriving in the background.
I came across this bull a while back on one of my walks. At that time, the area had not had rain for ages and the fields were dry and barren. I don’t know whether that was the cause for its demise or whether something else was happened. Either way, the cattle egrets weren’t too bothered, checking out the corpse for insects. The bull was gone the next day, and not because it got better.
In this modern society, it seems like we’re always liable to be tracked or watched. On a recent walk at Upolu, this cow kept a close eye on me as I walked by.
Graham's Island 