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| A sight we often saw this day: birders’ backs. (Larger version) |
Friday, March 9, among the
single-minded birders
A long day today, and a good tour. Mostly, I’ll just quote from my journal:
A long tour today, “Dry Forest, Rain Forest”, and a full van, twelve customers in all, all of them fanatical birders but us. And they were obsessive enough about birding that they could talk about nothing else. I did my honest best to look for this little yellow bird or that, this little red bird or that, but after a while I decided that I would play the game to all outward appearances but treat the tour as an opportunity for walking and taking pictures. And I think I did get some good shots.
That’s all I could think of to write about on our day. Our guide was John Pipan, and he knew a tremendous lot about the wildlife in general, and about birds in particular. I imagine that the birders must have appreciated his knowledge greatly.
On the pictures, first the block of four above and to the right: upper left (big image, small), that’s John in profile; upper right (big image, small), a nice lichen; lower left, an indigenous shrub or tree called Naio (big image, small); lower right, the sometimes-medicinal plant Great Mullein, Verbascum thapsus. It’s not native to Hawai‘i, of course, having originated in East Asia. I was surprised to see it in the middle of a meadow, since the commonest place to see it on the Mainland is alongside of railroad tracks.
In the column of four on the left, the second shot is of Hualālai above the fog; it’s on the west coast of the Big Island, not so far from Kona (big image, small). Below that, a plant (big image, small) whose identification I was hoping to crib from Mark’s page, but he only says “unidentified plant”—what good is that?
Finally, in the row of two snaps that are above and to the right, another view (big image, small) of a shield volcano, this time Mauna Loa. And then a nice Lehua blossom (big image, small). For all the remaining pictures, not much by way of description, I just arrange them neatly below:
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And then the tour was over, and John dropped us off at the resort. We chose to have dinner right there for once, and it was perfectly satisfactory. I had seafood with linguine, or vice versa, and Mark had short ribs—mine was just right in quantity, but Mark said that his portion was too big. And then to bed, for our last day of touring.