Wee Man Found a Mango

Fiddle Leaf Fig Fruit and Seeds

Brown Anole, Hawaii

Bullet-headed Snorkeling

Huge Philodendron and Variegated Ficus

Way Worse Than Hail Damage

Never park under a coconut palm.

Rainbows on the Trunks

ARainbow Eucalyptus is a pretty spectacular tree on several fronts.

Meadowlark On Kauai

Training the Nene

I’ve already trained the Nene Hawaiian geese to cross at the signs.

Baby Albatrosses!

No Albatross were harmed, hastled, or even given a good talking to while taking these photographs.

As adults, these birds have wingspans of about six and a half feet. They can live for over 75 years, mate for life, lay one egg a year, and begin reproducing at age 7.  

There are more females than males, and paired females have been observed raising chicks after quick insemination by a male, or when researchers have swapped in fertile eggs for infertile ones.  

Albatrosses can sleep while flying and may go years without touching land.  Laysan Albatrosses fly 50,000 miles a year, the equivalent of twice around the earth at the equator.

Truly remarkable birds, and I was lucky to stumble on them.

White-rumped Shama

White-rumped Shama are native to the forested parts of India and Southeast Asia, but its popularity as a singing caged-bird led to it being introduced in Hawaii.

Bark of the Rainbow Eucalyptus

Morning Scenery

There Be Dragons

Enormous snake skins drying in a warehouse, in the docks of London, 1930.

Peddling Through Paradise on Satan’s Bicycle

Bicycled around a bit on a balloon-tired bomber with no gears and coaster brakes. The bike is leaning against the colorful trunk of a Rainbow Eucalyptus. The almost cartoon-like “Christmas trees” in the back are New Caledonian Pines introduced to Hawaii from New Caledonia which is somewhat near New Zealand.

Returning Sea Birds, Kilauea Lighthouse, Kauai

Carolyn and I had an amazing evening at an overlook near Kilauea Lighthouse, Kauai, Hawaii. Thousands of returning birds — Great Frigatebirds, Red-tailed and White-tailed Tropicbirds, Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, Red-footed Boobys, Laysan Albatross — wers all coming in to roost on the rocks, in dirt dens, and in the thick brush on top of the cliff. A low moaning sound echoed up to us — very spooky and other-worldly. Going back tomorrow in full daylight. For a poor-quality iPhone video on low light, see >> https://youtu.be/NtZEnfWgF0M?

The Hawaiian Moorhen

Hawaiian Common Moorhen, now only found on Kaua'i and O'ahu.

Giant Fiddle Leaf Fig

Chestnut Munia

Chestnut Munias are seed-eating finches that like wet areas. The males are chestnut brown with black heads and hefty silver-blue beaks. Originally from southeast Asia and Indonesia, Hawaii's birds are naturalized descendants of escaped pets..

King Kong Lives Here

No single picture begins to capture the majestic scenery of Kauai, especially the fog and rain-shrouded volcanic mountains of the interior. This is where you come to make dinosaur movies. You can imagine that King Kong still stalks the high remote jungle.

Cattle Egret in a Palm

Native to Africa, where they follow large grazers like zebra, water buffalo, and Gnu, Cattle Egret are most often seen today following mowers and tractors.

The Hawaiian State Bird

The Nene or Hawaiian Goose is endemic to the Hawaiian Islands, and is found in the wild exclusively on the islands of Oahu, Maui, Kauaʻi, Molokai, and Hawaiʻi. In 1957, it was designated Hawaii's official state bird.

Baby Albatross Next to the Deep Blue Sea

Leysan Albatross chick nesting near the beach in Kauai. 

The chicks barely move at all, with eggs laid on very shallow scrapes. The parents leave them alone for long periods of time.

Laysan Albatross start laying eggs at age 5, and a Laysan Albatross banded by Chandler Robbins of Laurel, Maryland on the Pacific atoll of Midway is still laying eggs and making babies at age 75 — the oldest laying bird in the world.

Hello Hawaii

Fresh off the plane from San Francisco, we drive into the hellscape of Kauai: surf, coconuts, and beautiful birds. Yes, those are baby coconuts in the back yard. The struggle is real.

Waiting for a Meal to Fly In

Cooper’s Hawk waiting for a dove on the back fence of the row house that we are staying at in downtown San Francisco. No doubt waiting for a Mourning Dove.

California Gull

A rather boring, if descriptive, name.

Golden Gate Bridge Under Construction, 1934

The steel came from Baltimore, already primed this color.  They decided they liked the color, and kept it.

The Dogs Ran Up the Hill

I landed in San Francisco yesterday.

Lovely city.  I am staying a short walk from the corner of Haight and Ashbury, and it’s a short bike ride through Golden Gate Park.  Massive Eucalyptus trees in the parks, with olive trees on the street. Wonderful park. I would love to be a groundskeeper here.

The house I am staying in was built in 1907, right after the April 18, 1906 earthquake which destroyed much of San Francisco. 

When the 1906 earthquake hit, it soon became clear to surrounding hill residents how badly the City had been hit, when packs of dogs came running up from the shattered City.  

Ernest Simpson, editor of The San Francisco Chronicle wrote afterwards:

It was the dogs, wild with fear, couriers of the cataclysm, that gave me the first measure of our calamity... They had come far, for they ran slowly. Their jaws were dripping. They moaned and whined. All of them panted steadily up the steep hill. Then and thus I knew that, bad as it had been with us, on the hills the darker chapters of the story of woe were to be read on the lowlands and in the valleys. We were shaken but safe; below us were nameless horrors, the dogs knew, and knowing, ran to the high places.

The earthquake struck at just past five in the morning, and many buildings fell, but not all. The brick structure of The St. Francis Hotel, for example, initially remained sound.

Chef Victor Hirtzler and his staff swept out the kitchen and served breakfast in the café to tenor Enrico Caruso and other members of the Metropolitan Opera Company who, still in their pajamas, had fled to the Saint Francis after their own hotel began to crumble.

The young actor John Barrymore came in to the hotel just as the Earthquake struck and, stone drunk, seemed not to notice that the ground was violently shaking. He went upstairs to his room and went back to sleep until secondary alarms announced that fires were begining to race through the City.

San Francisco was burning. Most of the city was wood, and even when outside walls were made of brick, the tar roofs of the day burned, exposing wooden rafters and joists to licking flames.

The heat was so intense, it melted glass. Thick greasy smoke billowed miles into the air, choking residents who had little recourse except to let the city burn.

And burn it did, for three days, until at last there was nothing more for the flames to consume.

Dazed residents wandered the streets on the fourth day, stunned that they were alive and devastated by their loses.

Five days after the earthquake struck, work men looking for bodies in the rubble of the Saint Francis Hotel found the wine steward's fox terrier alive in the hotel basement. The dog was christened "Francis," and he came to be a symbol of the the City's endurance.

Just 19 months after the great San Francisco Earthquake and fire, the St. Francis Hotel reopened - proof to the world that City would triumph over adversity.

Today the Saint Francis Hotel still stands, and a children's book has been written about the little dog found in its basement.

As for me, I am not sticking around — flying off tomorrow.

Harmony With a Friend

Police Are the Face of Weaponized Fascism

Hole Boring Bit

The bore on this bit was big enough to drill a hole through rock big enough for a SUV to drive down.