holyschist: Image of a medieval crocodile from Herodotus, eating a person, with the caption "om nom nom" (Default)
holyschist ([personal profile] holyschist) wrote in [community profile] shutterspeed2010-10-24 11:40 am

Heron dreams (and some more stone)

After eyeing a Black-crowned Night Heron through binoculars for several minutes, I turned around and holy crap! There was one preening in a palm right in front of me. There were some stairs across from it, so I decided to quietly walk up them, turning back if the heron looked agitated.

The heron went to sleep.

King's Shops - Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax)

Personally, I am very glad not to have to sleep standing on one leg on a swaying palm frond, but the heron seemed quite happy.



King's Shops - Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax)

A few days earlier we took a guided hike out to see where lava is flowing into the ocean from the Puʻu ʻŌʻō vent. On the way, we crossed fields of very fresh (a few months to a few years old), largely unweathered pāhoehoe. Unfortunately, it was getting dark and I only had a long lens, so I only got a few halfway decent pictures, but it was gorgeous. Fresh pāhoehoe has a spectacular number of amazing textures which I had never seen in weathered lava before, and it's a deep, almost metallic shiny black.

My favorite was the part that looked like folded fabric:

Kalapana - Fresh Pāhoehoe flows

Kalapana - Fresh Pāhoehoe flows

Kalapana - Fresh Pāhoehoe flows

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