Galapagos Trip, Day 7
Tuesday morning we went to North Seymour island, one of the nesting places for the blue footed boobies and the frigate birds. While I had seen frigate birds flying overhead at various times, I hadn't been able to get a photo of them. I was hoping this would be an opportunity to actually get some pictures.
When we landed on North Seymour island, a swallow-tailed gull greeted us by peeping loudly at us as we left the Zodiac and climbed a little ways up the lava rocks to the trail.
A booby and its chick.
Boobies have long wings. Even fledgling boobies have long wings.
Sea lion on the trail, as usual.
A dead booby chick. :/ Something must have happened to the parents.
A collection of images of a preening gull.
A short, stout cactus. This is the kind of cactus the land iguanas eat.
A pelican eyed us from its perch. In the water you can see vague fish shapes- I think it was a school of sergeant majors near the surface of the water.
Booby pair! The male was displaying but I caught only part of it. The male booby lifts a foot.
A pretty female booby stands on a rock.
A hopeful male booby stares at her.
The male booby bows to her.
Alas, the female seemed unimpressed, so the male hid his shame by grooming himself.
The female would like to know if he has any other dance moves.
The male thinks for a moment...
He shows off his pretty blue foot, but the female has buried her head beneath her wings. :(
This booby chick would like to be fed.
We found another adorable scene with a father booby and his chick.
The father kept preening the chick while we watched.
So itchy! It was kind of neat seeing booby chicks in different stages of fledging.
We finally got into the frigate bird area! While the boobies like to nest on the ground, the frigate birds prefer the trees. apaprently they can take off more easily from the trees. Here a male frigate bird has inflated his neck pouch to entice the ladies.
Another booby chick, this one more fledged than the last.
More frigate birds in the trees. I liked these birds a lot- in flight they looked very prehistoric, like pterodactyls.
A frigate bird chick, looking rather vulturelike.
A dead frigate bird chick. :/
This frigate bird chick looked rather cute.
A land iguana stalks the wily cactus.
Another puffed frigate bird.
A booby resting on a rock.
A view of the back.
Gawky chick.
A frigate bird who was close to the tourist trail.
This male sea lion is quite proud of the fact that he sneezed/spat all over our nature guide right before I took this photo. It was pretty disgusting and we all laughed pretty hard.
The first time I saw a land iguana in motion!
When we got back to the ship for lunch, we found our towels had been turned into a booby family.
The afternoon excursion took us into the interior of Santa Cruz island to visit a tortoise reserve. This involved a 30 minute bus ride past farms and houses. I did see a couple of smooth-billed anis, but was unable to get photos of them. I wish I could have captured one via pixels, but they tended to hop into brush as soon as they saw the tourists.
Our first sighting of a wild Galapagos tortoise!
The tortoises have a nice habitat.
This guy was a big male tortoise. He stared in confusion at the tourists who wanted to get their photos taken with him.
He soon went back to grazing, however. Some video of the grazing tortoise.
Very lush habitat. It's interesting how each of the islands sort of has its own microclimate.
Another big male tortoise.
My best shot of a Darwin's finch... picking seeds out of tortoise poop. Hope no one was eating while looking at this!
After looking at the tortoises, we headed to a lava tunnel.
There were some schoolkids exiting as we arrived. This tunnel was pretty amazing, very huge and round.
My camera couldn't take very good pictures in the tunnel. It was very neat to see though. Bones and some human artifacts have been found in the tunnel.