Heron dreams (and some more stone)

[holyschist]

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.



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.





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:

Comments

[omens]

very cool! i love the 2nd to last one, especially.

[holyschist]

Me too--all the textures were practically unreal.

[darkemeralds]

The light on the breast feathers of the sleeping heron in that first shot is just ravishing.

And you win on the Stone prompt for photographing the brandest-newest rocks on the planet! Pahoehoe is such a fun word to say.

[holyschist]

:D Not quite brandest-newest--it was dark by the time we got there, and I wouldn't want to go so close to the flow in that area. But we sat on two-month old lava that was still not ambient temperature--rather warm, really.

I was actually rather surprised the heron wasn't more awake. About when the sun was setting, it woke up, preened a bit more, and then went right back to sleep.

[turlough]

I love the second and third photos. The composition of the heron and palm frond is exquisite, and the lava folds are spectacular.

[holyschist]

Thanks!

The textures were really amazing--so many of them get lost as the lava weathers.

[jesse_the_k]

All beautiful!

The middle stone looks like it came out of a pastry bag. Does it still have the sulfurous smell?

[holyschist]

In places, yes!