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Mauna Kapu (left) and the Wailua River (right) in Kauai, Hawaii. I photographed this while on an excursion from our cruise to Hawaii.  We parked along the precipice on Kuamo'o Road and we witnessed a majestic scene.  The mountain is just over 200 meters high; to give you a sense of scale there are two kayakers on the water on the first inside curve of the river.  There is a cropped image below to help you better locate them. Kayakers on the Wailua River, cropped from the above photo. We went on the Fern Grotto excursion next and I got lots of shots, many I will share in later blogs.  I am including an image of someone I photographed kayaking; I took it from the open-air boat we were on as we returned from the trip. Kayaker on the Wailua River, Kauai.  While we were up on the highway where I captured the fist image, we had a modest look at the Opaekaa Falls that were on the other side of the road.  The falls feed a different river.  The view was OK, but...

  Arigope appensa - Photographed in Maui I remember seeing garden spiders when I was a boy in Ontario.  The field across from us was lit up with their backlit dew-covered webs each morning in the fall.  Large black, yellow, and white beasts that would send chills down the spine of anyone brave enough to contemplate walking through the gauntlet of insect-trapping snares blocking the path.  You needed to be made of sterner stuff than I to accomplish such a feat. While on Maui, I was surprised to find such a creature on the plantation we were visiting  I expected to see birds, cattle, pineapples, mangos, and maybe a few butterflies (lots of monarchs there).  But coming face to face with my childhood nemesis was not on my mind.  And yet there it was. The Hawaiian garden spider is a native of southern islands in the Pacific including Indonesia.  Like many other species, it was introduced to Hawaii through sailors visiting from abroad.  The female ...

The website for the Polynesian Cultural Center (click here ) bosts, "Travel through time and space as you experience thousands of years worth of culture from six different island nations."  I often find that written marketing expressions are pretentious and disingenuous, but that is not the case here.  Indeed, if anything, the claims could be orders of magnitude above what is written and it would still undervalue what is to be experienced. I can safely say that I am not fond of crowds, commercialism, or the cacophony often associated with public venues.  I found the center, all 42 acres of it, visually delightful and full of fun, heartwarming hosts and pleased guests.  It was busy, but not overly so, and loud, but with a theme and purpose that embellished my experience there.  And it was wonderfully educational. We had five hours to tour the regions representing the island cultures; it clearly was not enough time if you wanted to embrace what each venue had....

How does a lizard get from where it originates (Madagascar) to islands that are thousands of miles in the middle of nowhere?  They were illegally introduced. In 1974, 50 years ago, a University of Manoa student in Hawaii released eight gold-dust day geckos on the campus.  Today their populations are exploding on the islands of Oahu, Hawaii, and Maui.  From eight to tens of thousands and they are not done yet. You would think that an educated person (or one trying to be) would know not to release a potentially invasive species into an environment where the species is not endemic.  It's not like there's no precedent.  In Hawaii alone there are plenty of examples of how exotic species have multiplied uncontrollably and wreaked havoc on the ecosystem.  Common mynas, rats, mongoose, coconut rhinoceros beetles, and many more have turned the paradise into a battleground.  Have a look at the invasive species list that Hawaiian authorities are trying to control...

Cattle egrets are native to Africa, parts of Eurasia, and Australia, but that hasn't kept them from making their way to distant lands such as North America and, as I witnessed, Hawaii.  I found that they were not present in heavily urbanized areas, but large fields would find numerous birds prowling the grounds for tasty fare.  One popular location was frequented by small, hard white balls.  Golf courses. We visited a farm as part of an excursion from the cruise we took.  I snuck away from the throng about me and headed to open range where I found both cattle and cattle egrets.  I quite liked the above photo as it shows the presence of both creatures, the blurred cow in the background symbolic of the birds' moniker. Cattle egrets often associate with ungulates because the moving beasts stir up insects that are escaping being trampled.  The birds have a commensalistic relationship with bovines in that the birds benefit from the cow's presence but in no way h...