Galapagos, Ecuador - Birding

North Seymour Island
The best place to see the iconic Galapagos birds is North Seymour island.  I'm referring to the magnificent frigate and the blue footed booby.  Darwin's finches may have been important for the theory of evolution, but they're not that interesting to look at.  We had fortuitous timing as this is the breeding season.

Our bus picked us up at 7am and took us across Santa Cruz to the canal where we caught a small yacht for the 45 minute trip around Isla Baltra to North Seymour.

We went ashore in two groups, six persons per dinghy.  While we waited our turn we saw dozens of large birds circling and floating against the wind.

Like most of the islands, North Seymour is rocky, windswept and dry.  The trees and shrubs have no problem getting sun so they don't bother to grown more than six feet tall.  The one obvious difference was the amount of white bird guano.

The Palo Santo trees were naked, having dropped their leaves at the start of the eight month dry season to survive.  These trees have a pleasant smelling sap that is reminiscent of lemongrass.  The natives say they ward off mosquitoes.  They grow them near their houses and rub the sap on their skin.

A close up of the rocks - all from lava flows.  Their filled with holes and are very light.  They look like they'd float on water.

We walked along the shore and the magnificent frigates were flying overhead, some just a few feet away.  The males are obvious with their red scarves.

These amazing birds can spend weeks in the air, even sleeping while they fly.  They only come down to eat, mate and rear their young.

Like most of the fauna here, they don't appear to care one bit about humans.  They flew close to us and floated only feet above our heads.  The males are gigantic - some have a five foot wingspan.

Once we reached the interior of the island, where the palo santo trees thicken, we began to see entire generations of frigates.  The amorous males were sporting inflated red breasts, trying their best to attract females.

They inflate their breast pouches with air and pose.  The females then choose the prettiest male.  They're really beautiful - the red is extremely bright and can be seen from a distance.

In many of the trees there were males, females, adolescents and even some newborns.

The young are known to be fratricidal, the first born usually pushing the second born out of the nest.  However, the food is so plentiful on North Seymour that there isn't the usual pushing and fighting.

The newborns are fuzzy and white and sit around waiting for one of the parents to arrive with dinner.  They require a fair amount of care and attention - they don't learn to fly for six months.  We saw a few adolescents trying unsuccessfully to get off the ground.

This is a teenager taking a snooze.

I kept waiting for our guide to say "there's a blue-footed booby" but he didn't.  I began worry we were going to have a birding session of frigates only.  I'd seen many iguanas already but based on the photo frenzy this one created amongst our trip mates, this must have been their first sighting.

We made our way across a corner of the island to the opposing coastline.  The surf was fierce.  I'd given up on seeing a blue footed booby.

And at that exact moment he decided to show up.  He was perched on a rock and as we all raced towards him I was afraid he was going to fly off.

Not only did he not frighten, but he also stepped down closer to us as if to show off.  He was so nonchalant.

These guys dive into the ocean like missiles, starting one hundred feet up and racing down, tucking their wings in and plunging up to a hundred feet under the water.  While on land they appear to be the coolest birds, spending hardly an ounce of energy.  This one waddled slowly off when he got tired of being the center of attention.

We headed to our yacht and motored back to the coast of Santa Cruz for a flamingo search.  Unfortunately, there were none to be found - the only failing of the entire trip.

Our guide told us an interesting story about the sharp objects sticking up out of the beach,  After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor the Americans began to worry about defending the Panama Canal.  They approached Ecuador and offered a deal to build an airstrip in the Galapagos.

The Ecuadoreans agreed under one condition - all the equipment the Americans brought there, all the cars, trucks, boats, bombs and planes were to be left there.  The Americans agreed.  They built an airport and improved the fresh water supply by laying pipelines.  Once the war was over, they left everything they'd brought.  However, they left it at the bottom of the ocean after they'd scuttled it.  This is the remnants of one of the American boats.

We donned our wetsuits and masks and braced for a cold snorkel.  It didn't look promising since there weren't many rocks and the surf was a bit strong.

I stayed in for only 20 minutes - there was nothing to be seen.  The Dodo stayed out much longer.