Kauai 2014: day 13

On my penultimate day of vacation, I made one final visit to Kilauea. Many pictures ensued, so I'll just jump right on in.

Some photos of red-footed boobies, starting with one of my favorites:

 

Looking right at me:

Gathering materials for their nests:

At least they won't lack for company:

Photos of a brown booby:

More whale action—I'm not sure if there's two or three whales in this particular image:

Not sure if there's two or three in this pic:

No real jumps on this particular day, but they were still pretty active:

 

I thought this one offered an interesting bit of perspective, as it has both a whale and an albatross in fairly close proximity:

A pair of nenes that whizzed by overhead:

A closer look at the lower of the two birds:

A later nene shot—no idea if these were the same two nenes, or a different pair:

A bunch of albatross pics:

Knowing I had a number of shots of various albatrosses flying against the sky, I focused on trying to get some with the ocean as the backdrop:

Doing a little grooming as it went by:

This one cracked me up, as this particular bird didn't seem too inclined to go for the streamlined look and tuck its feet in, making for a fun visual:

Kind of far away, but I still liked the silhouette: 

Coming right towards me:

And a couple of final closeups:

Checking out the muddy water spilling into the ocean, courtesy of all the rain we'd had:

Some photos of Beach Naupaka, a native Hawaiian plant with a variety of legends told about it. The first story I heard was during our Limahuli tour, and can be read here.  There's also another version to check out here.

And a couple of closeups:

A look at a monk seal relaxing on the rocky shore:

Not that it was easy to spot, given this is what the same area looked like to the unaided eye:

And finally, a few photos I took of a Hawaiian Coot working the edges of the Hanalei River, taken as we waited our turn at one of the one-way bridges: