New Zealand: the glow not of worms but of day

A year and a day ago we visited the Kawiti Caves in Waiomio to make up for something we’d missed on our first New Zealand trip: the famous glowworms. I couldn’t record that sort of glow on a public tour, so I turned my camera loose on what the glow of day revealed outside the caves. Mostly that meant native bush and boulders. (If we extend the scope of “native” to include “boulders,” we can ask whether there’s such a thing as a non-native boulder? I guess a large meteorite qualifies.)

I couldn’t decide which of two prominent rock formations to show, so I’ve included both. At the far right in the second view a few of you may see a pareidolic head akin to New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain, which collapsed in 2003.

What most caught my attention outside the glowworm caves was the old man’s beard lichens (genus Usnea) hanging conspicuously from some of the trees:

Just a month before I came upon this beard lichen in New Zealand, I photographed a species of Usnea an hour east of Austin.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman