Wild life

		Left: sea turtle at the black sands beach Right: the first of the whales tails seen on the snorkelling cruise
		And 8 more! Note the bite out of the tail of the 2nd down, right column. Apparently this one was a regular round those parts!



		Left: some of the huge pod of spinner dolphins that came by the boat trying to impress us! Right: 3rd best attempt at catching one of these spinner dolphins out of the water spinning
		And these were my best two. They're not very big, but these views are seriously cropped versions of the photos I actually took - the dolphins were at least 400 yards away.
		Presumably this chap was the reason why I had nightmares about Godzilla the previous night!
		Sea turtle down at Two-Step, next to the place of Refuge (SW of the island).
		Left: obvious! Right: horse looking forlorn in the pouring rain on the road to South Point. His mottled looking face is due to rain drops between him and the camera by the way.
		More wildlife down at South Point - this time from my second visit. This whale breached about 20 seconds before I got these two photos of it doing it a 2nd time. Definitely the highlight (photowise!) of the trip when I knew I'd caught this on camera.
		Left: and then as I returned to my car at South Point this whale was on the surface about to dive. Amazing good fortune as they surface for about a minute every 1/2 hour - and this one was only about 200 yards from me standing on the shore! Right: NOT a Canada goose, but a nene, the state bird of Hawaii. It is actually quite rare and there are two captive populations being used to keep numbers from dropping too low in the wild. One of these captive populations is in Hawaii and the other in England (sounds like Dell boy selling Canada geese at a profit to me!!). All this info from a Hawaii birds book I bought by the way!
		Cardinals (for those in the U.S. - we don't have them in the UK so I was excited to see them OK!)
		Left: Saffron finch Right: black-necked stilt in the fish-ponds by the conference hotel