---

Rico Leffanta says he has a "particular obsession" for photographing "naturally beautiful women." While he's waiting for that perfect subject in a perfect pose, however, he shoots birds, flora "and anything else that comes along." Here are a few of Leffanta's bird shots, taken all over Oahu.

---

Feathered friends

AS a child, Rico Leffanta was raised in rural Utah and Arizona. It was a literal living-off-the-land existence. "I grew up in the wild west, where we had to hunt for our food," Leffanta says. "My grandfather was a famous hunter, and I learned about aiming (and taking) that one shot."

Interestingly enough, it was this lifestyle that led to Leffanta's lifelong love of photography.

"The problem with shooting a gun is that with one shot, something dies, and it's all pau," he says. "A photographer can keep on shooting (their camera).

"I always say that if parents gave their children cameras instead of guns, we'd live in a different world."

Leffanta knows -- "I got my first Brownie back in the 1940s, when I was a child."

---

A Hawaiian moorhen, the colorful bird on the right, and a buddy, relax at Waimea Falls Park.

---

A duck family at Palolo Stream.

---

Pigeons bathe in a Waikiki puddle.

---

Wrens and doves perch themselves on the statue of Confucius in Chinatown, to indulge in a true birds-eye view of the city.