Still birding...

We never really stopped birding, we just stopped IBWO hunting for a while. Last November my dad and I visited the Galapagos islands. We saw almost every subspecies (island locale) of tortoise, except for Lonesome George's race, which of course died before our visit. We also saw many of Darwin's finches. I expected to have to hike up into the hills to see finches, but they are as common as house sparrows are here. The smaller finchs were most common. We also saw large cactus, small ground, and large ground finches. Below are images of a large ground finch eating a mangrove seed. Look at the massive bill...This is my favorite of the finches....