May 28th, 2006
Today we took the opposite direction today hitting all the spots to the south and west. First stop was a nice waterfall not far from where we were staying, these are the Opaeka’a falls:
Opaeka'a Falls, Kauai
I ran into this Green Anole across the street from the parking lot of the falls, this is another introduced species to the islands and appears well established, I saw several of them without much searching in a variety of habitats.
Green Anole
The next stop was another, larger waterfall, these are the Wailua falls.
Wailua Falls, Kauai
Pollination in action!
We drove around to the other side of the island, the landscape and general appearance is much different here. Much drier, desert-like conditions prevail on this side of the island. We made our way to Waimea Canyon drive and slowly ascended the 4,000 feet to the spectacular Waimea Canyon lookout areas and then on to Koke’e State Park.
As you can see, this is quite a spectacular canyon, called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, it extends for miles and is quite a photographic spot, we took way to many pictures and I’ll spare you all the shots but sufficed to say, it’s really something!
Lynn, pondering which angle to shoot at next…
Here’s a spectacular set of falls that drops over 1,000 feet to the canyon floor below. Helicopters are one of the only ways to see these up close unless you are willing to take on quite a hike!
Helicopers taking tourist for a closer look, note the rainforest in the background.
Another angle of the falls from a ways up the road from the lookout.
I am not sure if these are Red Junglefowl chicks or just domestic feral chickens but there were a load of Junglefowl roosters in the general area so I am assuming they are young Junglefowl and hen.
We made our way up the grade and on to Koke’e state park. The park headquarters is actually quite crowded at least when we were there so we didn’t stop and headed to the end of the road which is about 6 miles past the part headquarters. There is a trailhead at the end of the road which leads to an 11 mile hike along the rim of the canyon and then to the worlds highest rainforest swamp however, when we got to the end of the road and saw the amount of cars and volumes of people starting down the trail, we decided to see if we could find something a little less traveled. I had an agenda and that was to see at least one or two of the native Hawaiian forest birds that still populate this section of the island and we thought that our chances were greatly reduced due to the number of folks that were here. We headed back down the road a ways and found a trailhead where there was only one other car parked and took a path for about 1.5 miles through the rainforest.
There was lots of nice flora in the area…
Banana Poka - a beautiful but extremely invasive species on Kauai
Hibiscus
I encountered the first native forest bird of the trip on the trail, unfortunately it was so well hidden
in the forest growth that I was unable to get any good shots of it, Lynn captured my contemplating how to shoot this bird, the Elepaio.
Elepaio – unfortunately the best of 3 shots I got at him…
Turns out they are quite common, at least that’s what the books say, this was the only one I saw.
A short while later I encountered another introduced herp, this is a Metallic Skink (Lampropholis delicata).
The same species I have encountered in my two trips to Australia and native to that land.
Banana Poka Flower
Guava, I believe...
I believe this is a Monarch Butterfly, probably another stow-away from some long past boat trip, they were quite common in the area.
Another interesting flower and quite common in some areas as well.
And yet another flower...
We decided to keep looking as the trail didn’t seem to produce too much and drove back toward the park headquarters. There was a dirt road leading away from the park and there were some interesting flowers that Lynn had spotted so I drove down the road a ways and luckily, spotted a fleeting glimpse of red out of the corner of my eye. At first I thought that it was just another Cardinal but decided to stop and take a closer look, the bird was very far away, probably at least 75 yards which is where these 400mm lenses really pay for themselves. Turned out to be the second native Hawaiian forest bird spotted, the Apapane…
Apapane - Himatione sanguinea
Apapane - Himatione sanguinea
Quite by accident, while chasing this Apapane around I took some shots of a yellow bird that was fleeting around in the branches above and beyond where I had spotted the Apapane. I thought it was just another Japanese White-eye and didn’t know differently until looking at the shots in the camera viewer a few minutes later… LUCK! Another Hawaiian native forest bird, the Kauai Amakihi…
Kauai Amakihi - Viridonia stejnegeri
Note the curved bill, similar to the Apapane. There are several other native forest birds that are either nearly extinct or completely extinct now, some of them with curved bills that are unbelievable. Unfortunately, man and nature have played roles in their extinction. First, the introduction of the mosquito to the islands let to the introduction of viral parasites that decimated many bird species and then hurricane Iniki, which hit Kauai directly in 1992 literally sheared the canopy off the rainforest and was kind of a final nail in the coffin apparently for some of the rarer species however, one never knows and that’s why you keep looking, e.g. the Ivory Billed Woodpecker of North America…
We drove back down the mountain and hit a few rain showers but decided to check a couple of beaches on the way back toward the Kapa’a hotel we were staying at. We decided to check out Poipu beach so we drove down highway 520 to Poipu, had a quick dinner and then walked over to the beach to check out the sights.
There were several Green Sea Turtles in the surf, we spent a lot of time trying to photograph them, they were foraging right at the surf line on plants that were attached to the reef rocks. There were a couple of large Turtles and many smaller ones, looked like this was a good area for them.
Green Sea Turtle body surfing...
We took a lot of surf photos of course, the area was very picturesque.
Poipu Beach, Kauai
Intentionally over-exposed shot of the sun set, looking off from Poipu beach, Kauai.
There were a lot of surfers out quite a ways, trying to catch that last wave before the sun went down.
Another shot of sunset.
And of course, me, taking pictures of the surfers and sunset…
And of course, Lynn taking pictures of me taking pictures of the surfers and the sunset… hmmm, how do you do that?
And a large gathering of other people watching the sunset and taking pictures…:o)
I had been watching the Gecko’s around the hotel for a couple of nights and wanted to make sure I got some pictures of them before we left. so I did a quick walk-around and snapped a few photos before catching the attention of a security guard who must have thought I was some sort of peeping tom or something as I was walking around the outside of hotel rooms with a camera in hand…
At first I thought that all the Gecko’s were the same, the “House Gecko” or Asian House Gecko – Hemidactylus frenatus. However I noted that several geckos were much darker in appearance and had more pointed noses, more streamlined I guess than the others. I was able to catch one and examine it a little more closely, turned out that there were two species around the hotel, the Asian House gecko and the Indo-Pacific or Fox Gecko - Hemidactylus garnotii.
Asian House Gecko – Hemidactylus frenatus
Indo-Pacific or Fox Gecko - Hemidactylus garnotii
That was it for a very long day and tomorrow was going to be a "catch as much as you can" day before our late evening departure back to the mainland…
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