Kilauea

Friday was a mostly quiet day. We had plans for dinner, so we decided to keep the driving to a minimum. We spent the morning around the house, catching up on the photos, going for a swim at Hanalei, just lazing around a bit.

Lunchtime, we headed out for Kilauea. First stop was the Lighthouse Bistro for lunch. They have a fairly limited menu at lunchtime, fish tacos, burgers sandwiches. The fish tacos were good but not the best we had. It looked like they had a much more interesting dinner menu. The restaurant is in a small shopping mall, so we walked around the shops a bit after lunch.

Then we headed to Kilauea lighthouse and bird sanctuary. I was disappointed to discover that there aren't albatrosses around in the summer, they wouldn't get back until November. I had been hoping to see one. I did, however, see nene geese for the first time. They are all over the place here:


the lighthouse itself is quite pretty. Made me feel like I was in New England (well, except for the 90 degree heat and 100% humidity)


But the real attraction here is all the beautiful scenery and all the birds. There is a small island, just a short distance offshore that is the actual sanctuary:



We saw quite a few of the large frigate birds


We also so red-footed boobies, white tailed tropic birds, and a number of different terns and gulls. This is a booby


by the way, photographing birds in flight is a lot like skeet shooting. You try to lead the bird, and hope the autofocus is fast enough to grab it. I got a few good shots, but there were dozens of fuzzy empty sky pictures. It was almost worse than trying to get fish...the birds are faster.