This thread has destroyed one but rekindled a new one. Twenty years ago I photographed an apapane, a type of Hawaiian Honeycreeper, high up on Maui. An expert had me convinced this was a rare and exciting event, the bird having been only recently believed extinct. Now, in researching to get my facts straight, I see that the darn thing is downright common! I suppose I shouldn't let that affect what I had, but sheesh. Maybe it was a subspecies or something, or the island in question, but it sure doesn't appear to be that way from what I've been reading. (I know where to track that guy down. It could be that he was talking about it being rediscovered on a different island, and I got my facts muddled.)

The ambition I have always owned is to swim with a whale shark (and a manta ray.) I thought this had to be done only on the Ningaloo Reef in western Australia, so as to be an economically impossible dream. But looking into it today, I see that the same thing can be done in Belize in the spring. The impossible dream becomes tantalizingly, well, not impossible.. . .