Seven Days of Christmas on Kauai

Day One: Finding food to eat on Christmas Day.

We stopped at roadside farm stands for eggs, tangerines picked off the branch for a quarter each, bags of lettuce, papayas, smoothies, grapefruits, and avocados the size of melons. The juice bar was open for business, and a friendly praying mantis wished us happy holidays. When the North Coast’s notorious deluge let up, we stopped at Kealia Beach for a picnic lunch.

Juice and smoothie bar.

The praying mantis climbed up Dad's neck, then turned to face the camera. (Who knew they had swivelly necks?!)

Kealia Beach.

Day Two: Kiluea National Wildlife Refuge and Lighthouse.

This park has a short paved trail with views of a red-footed booby colony, a flock of nenes (endemic Hawaiian geese) with the unfortunate habit of charging moving cars, soaring white-tailed tropicbirds, the occasional pair of Laysan albatross, and a great frigatebird waiting to pirate the poor boobies’ catch of fish.

Mom and nene. 

Red-footed booby.

Mom and Lisa and, behind them, Kiluea Lighthouse.

Rain clouds came in fast.

Many male house finches on Kauai have amazing orange and yellow coloration instead of red.

Grazing nene.

 

White-tailed tropicbird.

Day Three: Waimea Canyon and the Kalalau Valley.

The dry west side of Kauai is graced with a magnificent red-dirt canyon, Waimea, that rivals the desert beauty of the Southwest. Lisa and I frolicked on Mars and hiked an hour down the muddy trail to view another deep gouge in the land, Kalalau Valley, coated in ferns and culminating in a remote white-sand beach far below us. Native ohi’a-lehua trees were pollinated by endemic red ‘apapane honeycreepers.

Red dirt.

Seastars.

Alright, we'll stop making goofy faces.

Breath-taking Kalalau Valley.

Fiddlehead fern.

I'm so frond of my family.
Pun credit to Sienna ;)

Day Four: Exploring Hanalei.

“Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea, and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Hanalei…” If any town is populated by magic dragons, this one is it. Surf shops, hippies, vegan organic shave ice, waterfowl in estuarine ponds, ancient sea caves exposed by low sea levels, unswimmable surf, traditional taro ponds, and infamous Puka Dogs can be found here.

Taro fields in the Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge.

Hawaiian subspecies of common moorhen.

Endemic Hawaiian coot.

Mom and Dad and a big old cliff.

Hanalei Beach.

Koloa, the endemic Hawaiian duck.

Hawaiian race of black-necked stilt in taro.

Day Five: Hiking the Na Pali Coast.

OMG this was the best day ever. Mom, Lisa, and I scrambled along the rocky cliff-side trail for two miles to reach Hanakapi’ai beach. A hand-carved wooden sign implored us not to swim with 83 tick marks and the warning: “Unseen currents have killed 83+ here.” Then we turned inland to climb another two miles of pure mud and reach Hanakapi’ai Falls, where cold jungle rainwater drops over 300 feet of volcanic rock. We crossed Hanakapi’ai River eight times, sometimes hopping across boulders, sometimes wading knee deep, sometimes clinging to a rope. We swam with endemic freshwater gobies (their pelvic fins are modified into suckers that let them climb waterfalls!) in a calm pool and finally reached the beach again. To make the last two miles go quickly, I created an interval game of running to Lisa (who was walking faster ahead), then waiting for Mom (who was walking slower behind), then sprinting back to Lisa, then waiting for Mom, again and again. I ended up running the whole trail in spurts and making friends with all the accommodating hikers I passed many times.

The green misty jagged cliffs of Na Pali.

Fearless hikers!

I couldn't fit Mom and Lisa and the top half of Hanakapi'ai Falls in one frame. 

Tree fern!!!!!

We... made... it... WHEW!

Day Six: Scuba Diving at Koloa Landing.

I was lucky to see dozens of new marine fish and invertebrate species today on a two-tank dive off the South Shore. Spinner dolphins and humpack whales poked up their dorsal fins while I suited up, and a couple lazy green sea turtles grazed underwater. My dive master, Elora, found me a bright purple, silky soft Velvet Star (Leiaster leachi) to admire!

Three spinner dolphins surfacing in synchrony.

Ready!

Day Seven: Stand-Up (and Lie-Down) Paddle Boarding on the Hanalei River.

After five minutes, “stand-up paddle boarding” turned into swimming, pulling Lisa while she laid back and sunbathed, paddling myself along on my belly using my hands, startling red-eared slider turtles, and witnessing a colony of black-crowned night herons angrily clacking at each other. By the end of our float back downriver, I was pulling both Mom and Lisa with our ankle straps connecting us. Nothing beats lazy river exploration at a frog’s-eye level.

White-rumped shama.

Pacific golden plovers winter in Hawaii on their own personal patches of grass. This one had a lovely territory outside our condo. 

This Laysan albatross sat beneath her tree on the Princeville golf course day in and day out. We had to creep very close to even make her turn her head so we knew she wasn't a statue. Maybe she was on a nest!

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The Wildlife of Honolulu International Airport

Christmas Eve traditions made way this year for a new adventure: Hawaii.

We had a layover at Honolulu International Airport on O'ahu where we found a courtyard filled with anoles, geckos, and lots of little birds.

Red-vented bulbul.

Red-crested cardinal.

Spotted dove.

Female house sparrow.

Brown anoles were everywhere!

Impossible to catch but easy to photograph.

I had to poke around in stacks of stepping stones to find the slumbering, nocturnal geckos (my favorite!)

I found about ten mourning geckos, Lepidodactylus lugubris.

I was going to check under this faded traffic cone, but I didn't need to lift it! This little gecko was hiding in the top.

She looks like either a house gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus) or an Indo-Pacific gecko (Hemidactylus garnotii) but I cannot for the life of me figure out which one she is!

Lisa and Gecko made friends.

She changed color from pale white to variegated brown in an instant.

My family members in their natural habitat.

A short island-hop later, we made it to our destination: the oldest, greenest inhabited Hawaiian island, Kauai! This island is divided into four sections.

Photo credit: www.hawaiicity.com

The South Coast is the sunniest region, and the best for swimming in the winter months due to kinder currents. It's where most dive shops and resorts are housed.

The East Coast includes the airport in Lihue, where we landed, as well as the towns of Nawiliwili, Kapa'a, and Wailua.

The North Coast, where we're staying, is known for rain. (We couldn't bear to miss our Seattle weather over winter break! But the showers here come and go in five minutes, and the droplets feel like a warm shower.) The north side is also famous for its lush green jungle (Jurassic Park was filmed here) and its rugged, rocky shoreline called the Na Pali Coast. The town on this side of the island is named Kilauea, and the well-kept-but-outdated-feeling, golf-course-focused tourist hub where we're renting a condo is called Princeville.

The West Coast is the enigma: only a few miles from the end of our road, but due to geological barriers, the road doesn't go through. To reach sites like Waimea Canyon on the west, we'll have to circumnavigate the island, a journey that takes around two hours.

See you tomorrow!

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Green Friday on Lizard Hill

My dad and I took off the day after Thanksgiving for our own Green Friday adventure to Lizard Hill, a growing-up Christmas tree farm on the Kitsap Peninsula.

The moon was out, and the sky so clear we could see the snow-lined crevasses on the Olympics and the Cascades.

Pelagic cormorants (shown) and double-crested cormorants were abundant on pilings.

I had no idea there was an Atlantic salmon fish-farm named American Gold Seafood on Bainbridge Island! The gulls, however, are well aware.

California sea lions love those buoy haul-outs.

The moist, exposed dirt of Lizard Hill's old roads is the perfect substrate for lichens, such as this freckle pelt (Peltigera britannica).

This cup lichen is one of numerous Cladonia species.

Frog pelt lichen (Peltigera neopolydactyla)?? I'm having fun trying to identify these lichens. The best reference I've found for pelt lichens in the Pacific Northwest is Jason Hollinger's webpage -- if you're ever in the woods with a pelt lichen quandary, I suggest you check it out!

 

Lipstick powderhorn (Cladonia macilenta).

Forking bone lichen (Hypogymnia inactiva). We were lucky to find this on a twig, blown down from high in the trees. I've never seen a lichen like this before!

 I saw several song sparrows and heard from many more. This one defended his territory valiantly against two small, chipping Pacific wrens.

While my dad and I were away from our car, a sly coyote left us this present. Best of all, my dad stepped in it a few minutes later!

We found a wind-felled Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) in the road and decided to adopt her as our Christmas tree.

On our way home, we stopped at Belfair State Park to check out the shoreline. We found lots of killdeers making their two-note keen.

The river was filled with decaying salmon carcasses and one live individual who looked not long for this world.

The salmon attracted a family of bald eagles and countless glaucous-winged gulls.

It was a seaside feast!

The beach was signed for oyster harvesting, but we found only shells. Most marine invertebrates use calcium carbonate (also called calcite) to build their shells and skeletons, but the crystal structure of calcite varies. Crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, and barnacles) use low-magnesium calcite. Corals and molluscs (like this oyster) use aragonite, which is twice as soluble in water than low-magnesium calcite. That's why scientists are worried that corals and molluscs are at heightened risk of dissolving as oceans acidify. But echinoderms (sea stars, sea cucumbers, sea urchins and sand dollars) build their skeletons out of high-magnesium calcite, which is THIRTY times as soluble as low-magnesium calcite! So,  if you're a sea star... drink an extra glass of milk a day?

A pied-billed grebe was hanging out at the Bremerton Ferry Terminal.

These huge plumose sea anemones (genus Metridium) remind me of cauliflower. (Can you find the photographer?)

A female red-breasted merganser joined the party.

This male surf scoter rocks the clown make-up.

On the ferry, this brave boy made friends with a hungry glaucous-winged gull.

Mount Rainier emerged to welcome us back to Seattle as the sun set behind the Olympics. Thanks, Dad, for the awesome Green Friday adventure!

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