A walk for the birds

A native I’iwi. This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Wild Animal or Bird of the Month.’ See more responses here. Pu’u O’o Trail is a few miles east of the saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, on the south side of the main cross-island highway. It’s all above 5,000 feet and can be cold, wet, and windy, but I’ve had good luck picking warm, sunny days. These photos are from a couple of recent hikes I took up there. Captions on the photos. The trail enters a kīpuka. There are open, grassy areas. A view of Mauna Kea. The trail crosses old lava flows from Mauna Loa, but there are kīpukas, areas of old-growth forest missed by the lava, which are home to several kinds of native birds. An ‘Apapane. An ‘Io, the native Hawaiian hawk, glides overhead. An Hawaii ‘Amakihi. On my last visit, I was lucky enough to see an ‘Akiapola’au, an endangered native species, which is only found on this island these days. This one was high up in the trees with the sun behind it. While my photos…