The Return of the Nose or a New Starfish for K Bay

    A new blog has been a long time coming.   In large part this is because on October 25th I had Moh's surgery on my nose.  When the diagnosis (skin cancer of the nose) was made in Portland in June, I was told I needed this special surgery, but so many other Oregonians were ahead of me in line that it was a six month waiting list.  Is this what it's like in Canada?  The silver lining to this deplorable cloud was that I might be able to have the surgery at Kaiser in Hawaii.  Strange as it may seem, within a fortnight of our arrival back in Kona, I was scheduled for the following week. 

The Buddha's Cup Awaits a Lucky Lepidopterist.

     It took five weeks to heal my schnoz sufficiently to warrant a return to the sea.  In the meantime we have tried to keep  busy. 

   One day we went with one of the directors of the Keiki Museum to an upland coffee farm here in Holualoa,  Buddha's Cup.  Our friend Anne, had heard from Siddhartha's companion that there were Kamehameha butterflies among their māmaki plants.  Anne made it sound like an extensive plantation, after all, the coffee company markets māmaki tea.  But when were deployed, boots on the ground as it were, there were six māmaki  shrubs spread out over an acre.  We spent almost  two hours patrolling the beat, waiting for Vanessa tameamea to flutter by.  Hence, from just after 10 until we went bat shit crazy around noon, we got an eyeful of Hawaiian nettle and, suffice it to say, zero butterflies. 

Is this the creepiest creche of all time, or what?

    I really wanted to write a blog.  Had we been successful,  I believe it would have been the first confirmed sighting of this threatened butterfly in Kona.  But who wants to be the publisher of the Journal of Negative Results?  If you want to take your chances, Google maps will guide you two miles up a windy one lane road to the Buddha's Cup coffee plantation where they serve food, offer tours at great expense and serve absolutely delicious coffee.  For a price Ugatti, for a price. 

    At other times I have kept busy making butterflies for an upcoming workshop, and nudibranchs and caterpillars.  And here you thought "only God can make a caterpillar"...Alfred Joyce Kilmer, loosely.   

     These latter are fashioned from fast drying clay that the previously mentioned Mrs. Van Brunt supplied me  at one of our weekly meetings.  Its like Anne has been my occupational therapist these last five weeks. She makes it appear that she works for free in this capacity, but this is an illusion. She is repaid in paper mache fish , clay nudibranchs...  the list goes on.  Both Sandra and I love her immeasurably.

   Sandra has a joke for you:  What do call a butterfly with no wings?   A caterpillar! 

A handsome Cylindrical Starfish, Kahalu'u  December 2023

      At any rate, today we let the nose lead us into the water at Kahalu'u.  It was a little rough and very choppy.  Additionally,  I am now so out of shape that it's ridiculous.  But in the nose's half hour at sea, he did spy a cleaning station with the eponymous wrasse doing his duty on a couple manini, and this nice  starfish. At first I thought it was a linckia star.  But more careful examination reveals those longitudinal plates marching down the arms.   As it turns out,  this is a life starfish for both the nose and the guy that follows along close behind.  A Cylindrical Star, D. cylindricus.  Although I have not previously recorded this species, it may not be highly unusual.  A furtive fellow, he spends his life (according to the Oracle of Ola'a, John Hoover himself) hiding under rocks.  And who am I to turn my nose up at a life starfish?  In the spirit of twitchers everywhere, I say Tick it off!  

     So the nose is on duty and he promises to sniff out something interesting in the near future.  Unless, of course,  the beast is under water in which case the nose will mind his manners and stay in the mask.

jeff