Travel Remembered

 In March of this year we spent a couple of weeks in Hawaii.  (Good Guy is making sure I make progress on completing my list of things to do before being too infirm to see and enjoy them.)

This is a picture of Waimea Canyon on Kauai.  This canyon is about ten miles long and a mile wide.  It's very picturesque, with lovely distant waterfalls and awesome gorges.  There aren't lots of places to pull off and properly gawk and take pictures, though.

As I've said before it tends to be the little things that give me a charge.  We took a tour of the island on Oahu and of all the breathtaking things we saw, this is one of the things that gave me a thrill.  We visited a Buddhist temple on lovely peaceful grounds where this happened.  Bird feed is available and these dear birds probably spend all day every day perching on people's outstretched hands, but it was a hoot to me to have birds eating out of my hand.

(BTW, I came home and dieted strenuously after seeing these pictures. And the task isn't completed yet.)

I'm not really a bird freak, but this entertained me too.  On Kaui there are many, many feral chickens who escaped during tropical storms that destroyed their coops.  I guess people had more urgent things to do than round up the chickens again.  They don't have the number of predators that we have here on the mainland, so they continue to survive.  It's funny to see chickens on the roadside where we might be accustomed to seeing ravens or crows.

Have a pleasant weekend, wherever you are.

Picture Project

At one point last summer, I was inspired by something I'd read to attempt to take a picture a day to record my year.

It was a nice idea, but camera carrying is not a natural activity for me.  Not to mention that I wasn't yet using a digital camera.  (I still love my camera that requires film, by the way.)  It takes really nice pictures, and I get to hold it up to my eye and peer through a little square aperature, like I've done for years.

Surf's up in Hawaii

Anyway, I digress. 

While Good Guy was recording the beauties of Hawaii, I was knitting a sock for Lynn.  She needed to be updated on its progress apparently.

He did get a shot of the surf without the sock, by the way, savvy photographer that he is.

Cardinal--Hawaii style

Then, there's this interesting guy who joined us for lunch at an outdoor table at lunchtime.  Isn't he a beauty?  It was interesting to me that a great many of the flora and fauna that we consider native to Hawaii, were in fact introduced and have crowded native species out.  Some are being reintroduced by garden groups and horticulturists.

In addition to this handsome fellow, Hawaii also boasts the beautiful red cardinal and his khaki colored consort which we have here in Michigan.  It is always a treat to spot them here because they seem shy compared to our ubiquitous chickadees, finches, nuthatches, woodpeckers, robins, and mourning doves.

Well, that's about all I have this morning from the Archives of Bird World.  Enjoy this lovely summer day!