Saturday Birding

This morning, Helen, Liz and I set out for Kilauwea, stopping first at Anini Beach to drop off the wine with Gary--the girls had forgot to take it yesterday to the birthday party.  Gary and family planned on flying home sometime tonight, but Audrey and Bill were staying a few more days.

It had rained hard in the night, and puddles were everywhere--the roads often were silty.  The drive in to the Kilauwea Lighthouse and Wildlife Prteserve also showed that weekend traffic is much thicker than during the week.  Still, we found a parking place and were able to walk out to the lighthouse and overlook the red-footed booby rookery, and also the nesting areas for shearwaters and other seabirds in this special refuge.  They rapidly swooped past on sharp air currents, diving into the cliffs, and disappearing from view.  I took over 300 pictures, and out of that (wonderful delete key) found that I had caught a few that are good:

Beautiful blossoms on the native plants in the preserve are also abundant, as is an unusual pine.

We saw nene for the first time this trip on the lighthouse grounds.  These beautiful Hawaiian geese have small wings and their flight is not strong, so they remain year-round residents of these islands, not migrating the thousands of miles like their Pacific flyway cousins.  Four were grazing on the grass and watching the tourists at the lighthouse, staying in two groups of two:

 

 

We left the lighthouse and headed up to see how the heavy rains had affected Opeaka'a Falls on theWailua River.  The falls were much wider and more silky than two years ago as they tumbled down the cliffs, and everybody was taking pictures:

As we traveled further up the canyon to the arboretum at the end of the road, we found our progress was stopped by high water flowing over the road, which was apparently a low water crossing.  We also photographed one of the Moa chickens, who was looking for handouts.

 

Next, we lunched in Kapa'a, where Helen had a grilled chocolate sandwich (for real):

After lunch we headed back to our condo, but first stopped to photograph some dancing albatrosses, and a mother albatross and her chick (we remained in our car on the street and did not approach these birds--this is a telephoto lens):