Weeds and wildlife of Kauai

[urbpan]

We turned around at the end of the road and headed up to see the Kilauea Point Lighthouse and National Wildlife Refuge.


As is my custom, I took pictures of the roadside weeds.




cottonmanifesto suspects that this one is a kind of spurge, and I don't doubt it.


Woody roots descending a cliff make a curtain where they reach the roadside.


Toward the interior of the island we could see distant waterfalls on a high mountain, its top lost in perpetual clouds.


At the National Wildlife Refuge, we saw more Nenes, which was exciting, and one Canada goose, or so I thought. As it turns out, the smaller, tundra-breeding goose subspecies have been split (by the American and British Ornithologists' unions) into their own species--the cackling goose Branta hutchinsii. Cackling geese occasionally stray from Alaska down to Hawaii. This individual had been hanging around with the nenes at the wildlife refuge for a few weeks, according to the staff there. Nenes, interestingly, are thought to have derived from a stranded population of Canada geese (not cackling geese) that evolved in isolation in Hawaii.


My dad likes lighthouses and I like wildlife, so this stop was great for both of us! This is the northernmost point of the main Hawaiian Islands. (I say "Main" Hawaiian islands because there are a bunch of small islands that are part of the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge stretching hundreds of miles north and west of Kauai.)


(and also this island that you can see from the lighthouse).


Across the way on these seacliffs you can see hundreds and hundreds of red-footed booby nests. With my binoculars I saw these nesting birds, lots of red-tailed and white-tailed tropicbirds, Laysan albatross chicks, and down in the water, a huge green sea turtle. The cliffs where we were walking were honeycombed with wedge-tailed shearwater nests--burrows that these nocturnal seabirds spend the heat of the day. Overhead were female great frigatebirds; the males were off trying to impress other mates--in the Galapagos or elsewhere--with their red throat balloons. Frigatebirds primarily survive through "piracy" (or even better "kleptoparasitism"). These huge birds harass smaller fish-catching birds (like tropicbirds and boobies) into regurgitating their prey. The literature suggests that they eat other birds' chicks as well, and there were plenty of those for the taking here.


Red-footed boobies are seen in this detail of the previous photo as white specks in the vegetation.

Comments

[somniferum.livejournal.com]

The pictures and descriptions of all the shore birds really makes me wish I were there! I even learned about nenes. They remind me of nothing so much as zebra finches in goose form, with their stripes and orange cheeks.

[(Anonymous)]

Color me surprised-- I didn't realize there were evergreens out in HI.

We've got a ton of it in the garden here, the weed in the 4th photo, that is.

[quillon.livejournal.com]

Sorry that was me. I didn't realize I wasn't logged on.

[carloshernandez.livejournal.com]

The lighthouse picture is amazing!