Of all of the excursions we took on this trip, I personally found this one to be the one that captured the essence of the Galapagos more than any other.

Life was abundant, the land was harsh, and the contrasts between lifeless and teeming were distinct.

This was also the hike that drove home exactly how harsh life on the islands can be for any given individual animal, while the population, as a whole, thrives. More on that in another post as the pictures are rather brutal.

Isla Fernandina is the most active volcano in the archipelago (and one of the most active in the world).

Thus, it is an island of many fresh lava flows intermingled with the green of new, and sometimes relatively old, growth.

As the rich sea upwellings strike the island, it supports a diverse and rich ecosystem at the shore.

Much of which we were about to see.

Looking across the lava flow and beaches from our Zodiac, it looked like the entire island was covered ancient weathered logs.

Not so! There were hundreds and hundreds of marine iguanas. Thousands, actually.

Piles of them everywhere.

And, oddly, in the late afternoon sun, they largely align themselves in the same direction towards the sun. As mentioned in a previous post, marine iguanas are cold blooded. They regulate their temperature by both pressing their bodies against the hot lava rocks and/or controlling the cross section of their bodies exposed to the sun.

As can be seen in this photo, the iguanas were entirely un-phased by our presence. Actually, the bigger risk was to us!

Namely, after the iguanas spend time feeding in the ocean, they sit on the rocks, warm up, and sneeze out salt water. If you are posing like Roger was in this photo, you run the very real risk of being sneezed upon!! No surprise, Roger spent a bunch of time trying to get sneezed on!

No surprise, the Sally Lightfoot crabs were ever present on this island, too.

This one is demonstrating one of their primary roles on the islands. The crabs are the cleanup crew!

This crab grabbed a dead fish from a pool and had dragged it up on the lava rock for a fine meal.

With food in claw, a crab was one of the few critters that was actively wary of us. Given the tug of war that other crabs demonstrated over much smaller bits of food, I can certainly understand why said crab was feeling a bit possessive!

Punta Espinosa was also home to tons of sea lions, including many pups.

This particular photo reminds me nothing more of a puppy looking for a treat!

This particular bit of rocky beach was also home to many flightless cormorants.

Many were sunning away, warming up their stubby little wings in the late afternoon sun.

But, not all.

This pair of cormorants were in the midst of a courtship dance.

It is interesting to note just how low in the water the cormorants swim! Almost their entire backs are submerged most of the time.

By contrast, your average North American duck sits with almost its entire body out of the water.

I conjecture that the evolution away from flight in a tropical clime also included an evolutionary change away from the exceedingly efficient lightness of being that flighted birds must maintain.

In the midst of the walk, we took a moment to have a sit on the beach and enjoy all the wildlife going on around us.

Hrmm…. big still things that are atypical. So, of course, the wildlife came to check us out.

It was like a parade of sea lion pups!

Each one would wander up in front of me, check out me and my camera, then wander off to their next task at hand.

In some cases, it felt like they were posing. “Check me out! This is my good side!”.

In this case, I turned around to snap a photo of Roger looking at something interesting and this particular sea lion stuck itself right smack in the middle of the picture!

I had no idea I had snapped a picture of roger with the sea lion until I downloaded the image to the computer.

Yes, in fact, I had been photo-bombed by a sea lion!

This was another one of those photos where the naturalists expressed some surprise. The lava lizard was eating a crab. Long rumored, but never really confirmed. When Roger and I first found this scene, the crab was very much still alive. We called the naturalist over and he was both surprised and excited to have confirmation that the lava lizards are potentially predatory, a behavior that had not been expected.

Note also that the lava lizard has a bit of dividing line right down the middle. It is the middle of shedding and, thus, the front half is relatively new skin while the back half is still in the process of shedding.

Much of our walk was across gigantic slabs of ropy lava. This is much of what the fresh lava flows look like.

“Ropy” is an apt description. I cannot imagine the fluid dynamics of the millions of tons of red hot molten rock that would lead to such consistent ropy pattern across the surface. Amazing.

More amazing,though, is that such a terribly hostile surface can be worn down to support life.

In particular, the Lava Cactus is one of the first to colonize the lava flows.

After the wind blows over the lava long enough to create surprisingly small pockets of sand that provide just enough purchase for the roots of the cactus.

I would assume that birds eat cactus seeds and then drop them on the lava.

The cactus are often eaten by an endemic rat. In any case, their remains fall and rot, creating more soil for more cactus or other species to gain a foothold.

For a photographer, one benefit of the incredible abundance of generally fearless creatures is that you can find those animals that are willing to pose (much like this brown pelican).

Out of the thousands and thousands of marine iguanas on this particular spot, I found these two individuals that, somehow, struck me as having just a bit of something to make ‘em interesting subjects.

Maybe it captures a bit of the magic of the Galapagos. On the one hand, you are immersed in this incredible science lab that illustrates the evolutionary brilliance of our planet better than any class ever could. Yet, stepping back from the science, you are surrounded by both sheer beauty and, upon closer study, those one in a million individuals that, due to sheer circumstance, happen to strike a pose.

Not only did we do a Zodiac tour of the coast line and cave, but we also hopped in the water for some snorkeling in the calm, almost bay-like, shallows near the shore of Punta Vicente.

This particular area is well know for the vast number of Galápagos Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas agassisi) that hang out in the water. As there isn’t much in the way of sandy beaches, this spot didn’t really seem to be an attractive nesting grounds.

At least not for the turtles.

The flightless cormorants, penguins and other birds could be seen nesting all over the cliffs and rocky beaches.

Unlike other areas of the world, the turtles in the Galápagos showed no real fear of humans. They were perfectly content to float about.

However, there was one very absolutely strict rule; do not approach or touch the turtles. On the other hand, if a turtle decided to inspect you, that was OK!

And inspect they did!

While Roger and I were diving down to get a closer look at the ocean floor, we turned to our right and this rather grand turtle had swam right up to us for a closer look!

This particular turtle followed us around for a bit, getting within a couple of feet even though we were trying to keep our distance.

While an incredibly impressive creature, this particular snorkeling spot had much more to offer.

Fortunately, Roger was with me and was acting as spotter. Roger has an incredible ability to spot critters where no one else would ever notice.

In this case, Roger tugged on my arm and pointed to something hanging just below the surface of the water. I saw nothing and asked him what he was pointing at. “A fish, dad, there is a fish right there!”, Roger said.

Uh, no… I just see some floating seaweed. Until I looked closer.

Sure enough, there was this little tiny bulbous fish.

I wish I had a better capture, but this was as good as it got. This little Frogfish was floating a couple of inches below the surface and was tiny; less than the size of a dime!

When I asked one of our ever-friendly naturalists for an identification, she responded with great excitement and immediately grabbed a couple of her colleagues! Turns out that she had been looking for this particular fish for nearly a decade with no luck!

Though his reputation was already pretty well sealed, it was from that particular find on that pretty much everyone came running when Roger would said “Hey! Look what I found!!!”.

Of course, while snorkeling in these rich waters, there was a pretty steady stream of birds swimming or flying by as they hunted down dinner.

While snorkeling, one of our party made commotion behind us and pointed. When Roger and I turned around, there was a Cormorant quite literally directly between us! That yellow bit in the background is Roger’s floatation vest; Roger was maybe three feet away.

The swimming feet photo reminds me of this song.

The critters weren’t just amongst the rocks or right at the surface.

We ran into this particular Pufferfish (Tetraodontidae) several times while snorkeling in this area.

What isn’t apparent from a still picture is that some pufferfish are quite adept at changing their skin color to match the nearest background. In this case, Mr. (Mrs?) Puffer has assumed a rather flat coloration. As it approached the bottom, the back would become dark enough that the spots would almost disappear!

This particular spot was just full of life. A whirlwind tour follows….

There were, of course, plenty of the green sea urchins. Nowhere near as many as we had or would see in other places, but ever present, certainly.

While looking around the various tumbles of rocks, I spotted (one of the very few that Roger didn’t spot first!) this Galapagos Reef Octopus hiding under a rock.

I bet that is a magnificent creature when out and about.

Octopus, however, are largely nocturnal critters.

Roger did find this crab.

Neither of us could figure out if it was alive.

We both agreed that the bright crab against the dark volcanic sand made for a stunning image.

Like the sea urchins, the king angelfish were quickly becoming ubiquitous companions in the water.

In this spot, they were huge and there were many.

When Roger and I were about ready to climb back into a zodiac to head back to the boat, we heard a loud splash and saw a stream of bubbles literally within a couple of yards of our faces.

A blue footed booby had dove into the water from great height and descended to about 40 feet below us!

The bird then surfaced, wolfed down its caught meal, and took off. While I couldn’t snap a photo of the dive (silly bird actually surprised the heck out of me! I was in no condition to take a photo!), I did grab this snap of the bird heading off into the distance with the Endeavor in the background.

A fitting end to a great morning of touring this spectacular and magical spot. Morning?! Yes. Still only the morning! There was still another rather epic adventure ahead after lunch!

Anchoring off Punta Cicente Roca after our long journey around Isabela Island, we were greeted with quite the geological smorgasbord of coastline.

Beyond this rather stunning point of green with cave below, you can see a much rawer bit of dark lava to the right.

To the north — just beyond that cave — are long stretches of coastline that are largely raw, relatively, fresh lava flows with swaths of green where the lava hadn’t flowed in the last 100,000 or so years. Even in this relatively small bay, there were sandy beaches, weathered cliffs of a sandstone like rock, broken tumbles of lava boulders and dramatic sheer cliffs.

With all of the different kinds of coastline in such a small area, this was clearly a spot worthy of further exploration.

Before diving into one spot (literally), we took a zodiac based tour of the shore to see what critters might be around.

As we approached the cliffs, the first bird we ran into was….

… A PENGUIN!

The Galapagos Penguin is an endemic species to the islands and is the only breed of penguin to live either so far north or to live on the equator. For that matter, the small population that lives at the northern tip of Isabela island are the only penguins in the world to live in the northern hemisphere!

The birds are still well insulated for a cold climate, which comes in handy as they forage for food in the very cold waters of the Humboldt and Cromwell currents.

While the lands of the Galapagos islands are either tropical or relatively desert climates, the sea water is actually quite frigidly cold for much of the year.

Travel tip: Go to the islands in April as the water is relatively warm, while the weather is generally not too rainy. If you go in late July, it’ll still be warm on land, but you can expect the sea temperatures to be absolutely frigid!

While the above penguin looks quite grand, this one… not so much. This is a penguin in the middle of a molt and is actually just ifne.

The penguins generally molt prior to breeding. As molting means losing much of their insulative feathers all at once, the birds will generally stay out of the water and the molt most often happens in the spring when the water is the warmest.

This was also our first — but not the last! — real introduction to the Galapagos flightless cormorant.

Many thousands of years ago, these birds found their way to the Galapagos. Most likely, enough birds to form a breeding population made it to the islands either by flight or on various storm produced floating debris.

Given that there are no land based predators and that Cormorants hunt for food underwater, the birds lost the ability to fly, optimizing for swimming ability instead.

Unlike many waterfowl, the feathers of the cormorant are not actually water proof or, even, particularly water resistant. It isn’t uncommon to see the birds drying and warming themselves in the sun, including sticking their stubby little wings out to dry.

As ungainly as they are on land, the birds are spectacularly good swimmers. Oddly, when swimming, a cormorant doesn’t really sit on top of the water, like a duck. Instead, they swim with most of their body just below the surface!

More on that in a later post….

While we had seen Marine Iguanas on other islands, Isabela was the first with any real population density. Of course, it is nothing compared to the mass of iguanas we would encounter later in the day!

The iguanas of each island have very different coloration due to the color of the algae they primarily eat, which varies from island to island. Whereas the iguanas of Espanola Island were reddish, these were pretty solidly dark grey and black.

What is most surprising, though, was exactly where the iguanas in this photo were. Specifically, that mass of iguanas, with many more in either direction, are at the top of a 50+ foot tall, relatively sheer, cliff! As ungainly as the creatures might look, they can climb!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t really capture it as we were too close to shore.

Note that the iguanas are all pretty much lined up the same direction. Being cold blooded, the iguanas must use their environment to regulate temperature. In particular, they will expose more or less of their bodies to the sun to regulate temperature.

The iguanas were not the only creatures demonstrating a surprising ability to climb.

This is a fur seal — really, a sea lion (sea lions and fur seals have ears… true seals do not) — hanging out on a rock a good 30 feet vertically above the sea.

I would have a hard enough time climbing up that jagged tumble of lava boulders. Trying to do so with stubby flippers in front and a big flipper in back is unimaginable, yet this guy made it seem casually easy!

Along with penguins and fur seals, we also saw many boobies, a handful of frigates, and even another Galapagos hawk (which was too quick for me).

With the tour of this awesome shoreline behind us, it was time to go for a swim.

During the night, we crossed the equator while traveling northward on our way to the westernmost islands of the Galapagos archipelago. Specifically, our destination was snorkeling off Punta Vicente Rosa (Isabela Island) followed by a hike over lava flows on Punta Espinosa (Fernandina Island).

First, though, we had to get there.

At about 6:30am, we were woken by an announcement that a couple of large schools off dolphins off both sides of the ship.

And large they were!

Literally hundreds of dolphins cruising through the water on the way to wherever dolphins go at the crack of dawn.

But not just swimming. Quite a few of the dolpins seemed to want to fly, leaping high out of the water, twisting about, and splashing along.

The captain of the ship circled us about for a while amongst the dolphins and we had nearly an hour amongst these magnificent creatures.

Photography aside: This is when the Canon 100-400mm lens really came through. The dolphin were mostly far off from our boat. Having an image stabilized lens with 400mm of reach on a 1.6x crop factor camera body made these images possible.

That and a bit of patience, a touch of luck, and a willingness to burn through a few hundred exposures before 7am.

Right before we crossed the equator from north to south, all of the kids on board were called up to the pool. Swimming suits were encouraged greatly.

One of the joys of being on a Linblad crew is that, beyond the deep immersion into the natural world at your destination, the crew is all about making sure their guests of all ages enjoy themselves, too.

There is a long standing naval tradition revolving around a sailor’s first crossing of the equator from North to South. While it has oft been historically brutal, sometimes resulting in death, ours was considerably gentler.

A bit of a ceremony was held with the history of King Neptune and the crossing told, with crew dressed in various costumes. As we crossed the equator, the kids were tossed jumped in the pool and a good time was had by all.

About 30 minutes after this bit of fun, we were anchored off of Punta Vicente Roca and ready for our next adventure.

After the wonderful snorkeling in the AM off Champion Island, the Endeavor lifted anchor at lunch and took a short cruise to anchor just off of Cormorant Point (Punta Cormorant) for an afternoon of beach walking and hiking on Island Floreana.

Floreana is a middle-aged island in the archipelago. Thus, it actually has honest-to-goodness beaches while still having volcanic cones and a handful of fairly raw, mostly lifeless, lava flows.

Access to any part of any of the Galapagos islands outside of the handful of human enclaves is extremely restricted in what is, effectively, a gigantic natural park.

Floreana offers one of the few beaches upon which we could wander freely. And so we did prior to taking a walk across Cormorant Point to a second beach that was also the nesting grounds of green turtles.

Upon landing, Roger immediately found something interesting. In this case, a sun-bleached pencil urchin.

On this particular Lindblad cruise, there were actually quite a number of kids.

The free beach time was also an opportunity for the kids to swim about and generally get in some quality beach play.

The waters were warm and, on this beach, quite clear.

Not surprisingly, the kids weren’t the only ones to show up on such a beautiful beach. The ever present sea lions were out and about, too. While the kids were in the water, you would often catch a glimpse of a sea lion or two swimming about near or, even, between various swimmers!

The beach had its share of creatures beyond sea lions, too.

This brown pelican — rather grand brown pelican — was hanging out on one end of the beach.

Combining the lack of fear of humans with the low afternoon light, it made for a very patient and stunning photography model!

I ended up taking about 100 frames of this one bird, varying parameters, angle and framing.

Between the patience of the bird and me being able to take the time to do a proper photographic study of this magnificent creature, I ended up with enough “keepers” to devote a post to this one subject!

What an absolutely incredible creature!

Along the beach we ran into this little Yellow Warbler.

It was quite fascinated in us.

At one point, the little bird actually went after one of our fellow passenger’s flip flops! No matter which way she turned or hopped, the bird followed right along!

“Lack of fear” does not mean “moves slowly”.

As with many song birds, the yellow warbler was quick to move on to the next point of interest.

Proving once again that “keep the camera in burst-shot mode” is quite effective, I caught a shot of the bird taking off for the next point of interest. With bits of sand popping up into the air, even.

After spending time on the beach, we set off for a hike across the point to another beach.

The path went along a rather large natural brackish swamp upon which greater flamingos nest and raise their young.

This is a juvenile greater flamingo that is hunting for shrimp in the shallows.

Note that bird is completely in pink color.

The pink comes from their diet of shrimp. After many months of eating shrimp, the flamingos will gain their distinctive pink color (much like the marine iguanas who pick up their color from the algae they eat).

The flamingos even sleep in the stereotypical fashion; one leg raised and head tucked in. This preserves heat by both minimizing exposure of the relatively uninsulated neck region and limiting body heat lost to the cold water.

And, yes, the greater flamingos really do turn bright pink!

These were adult birds feeding in the brackish swamp about 2,500 feet from the trail we were on.

Like a number of birds in the islands, the flamingos lay their eggs out in the open. For flamingos, they lay in relatively open areas right near the water.

As they weren’t viable, these eggs were abandoned.

Roger, no surprise, found tons and tons of critters that rest of us missed.

In this case, Roger found a couple of the Galapagos Painted Locust that were in the midst of mating.

Stunning colors amplified by the late afternoon sun…

While we rarely had rain, the abrupt rise of the volcanic mountain range in the otherwise entirely flat ocean does lead to random cloudy turmoil over the islands.

And that leads to the occasional rain squall.

Which, given a low sun, leads to the occasional rainbow!

A fitting end to our hike as we headed back across the point to re-board the boat.

Of course, there are a ton more photos in the full set for this day.

While beachwalking on Island Floreana, we came across a brown pelican hanging out on one end of the beach.

It was late afternoon and the sun was fairly low in the sky, making for some wonderful warm lighting as long as I could maneuver around to the right angle.

Which, of course, proved to be easy given that the pelican really couldn’t care less what about me.

Thus, photo study time….

Pelicans are quite interesting geometrically. They can choose to maintain a relatively horizontal profile or can lift their head up, tuck in their bill, and go for a vertical appearance as in this shot.

With just a bit of a wind, the feathers on the back of the bird’s head were fluttering slightly in the wind.

The color near the end of that viciously hooked bill is exquisite, too.

Like I said, wait for a moment and you can grab a vertical profile or a nice horizontal shot like this one.

Given the texture of the feathers, I’d bet this pelican had been fishing not long before and was so patient because the sun was warm.

Take enough photos and you’ll eventually get something truly out of the ordinary.

In this case, I caught the pelican mid blink. That would be the pelican’s nictitating membrane, if I’m not mistaken.

I would like to say that it was my awesome skills applied to an epic shutter finger that yielded this photo.

Not so much.

This is the product of taking about 100+ photos of this one bird. Choose an angle, choose a framing, choose some settings (I shot all of these in manual mode to get a feel for it), and fire off three to five frames (my camera is pretty much always in multi-frame mode).

The beauty of digital is that there is no more cost incurred, save for a bit of your time selecting the best shots, for shooting one frame versus 10 of any given subject!

The seas around the Galapagos are every bit as biologically interesting and diverse as the land, but in a different way.

Whereas there are relatively few land dwelling species on the island, all unique and generally completely lacking in fear of humans, the sea life is more in line with what you would expect in relatively tropical waters around the world.

While the fish were fairly typical, the underwater environment was otherwise atypical. Notably, there simply isn’t any significant coral growth. No coral heads of any size. No coral reefs and none of the rough, nook and cranny filled, walls of coral growth normally associated with tons of tropical fish.

Instead, and making the waters of the Galapagos fairly unique in and of themselves, the lava foundation of the islands provides all the hidy holes marine life of all sizes might need.

To provide the biomass to feed the incredible numbers of fish and other marine life, the islands sit at the cross roads of five ocean currents, with major currents dominating from the South, North, or West depending on season and El Nino.

Some of the currents are quite deep and bring up tons and tons of biomass in the form of plankton and other deep sea creatures as the currents hit the archipelago.

As a result, there is plenty of biomass to support a dense and diverse marine population. Yet, those very currents — the one up the west coast of South America from the Antarctic — also means that the water temperatures can be really cold for part of the year.

Hence, no significant coral growth. Coral needs a constant, relatively warm, water temperature.

Travel tip: If you are planning on visiting the Galapagos, go in April/May. The predominant water current is very warm and, thus, we spent the week snorkeling in 79 to 82 degree water. No wetsuit needed. If you were to visit the same locations in August-ish time frame, the water would be a chilly 65 degrees!

In any case, enough words. What about the creatures themselves?

As can be seen in the photo above, there are tons of fish! Lots and lots of your relatively typical equatorial fish with a handful of Galapagos only (endemic) fish.

Yet, there are also pretty much always sea lions darting about. Being the inquisitive creatures that they are, it was pretty much the rule that any time humans are in the water, at least a couple of sea lions would wander by to check us out.

Likely, this one was laughing at my complete ungainliness underwater compared to a sea lion’s nimble grace!

Sea lions are natural clowns. They love to play. You’ll constantly sea juvenile sea lions playing tag, wrestling, or pestering the adults.

Much of the sea life falls into one oftwo categories for sea lions; food or toy. Thus, it is rare to find a puffer fish of any size — a fish that isn’t particular fast and sticks near the shore — that doesn’t look a bit beat up because sea lions will annoy them to inflation and then use the puffer fish as a ball!

(I have to admit that I’ve done the same before I knew better. Not very nice to the puffer fish, admittedly.)

While many of the fish are relatively generically colored, there were a handful that really stood out.

This is a King Angelfish. King it was! These large fish can be found all over the waters near the shores of the islands. Sometimes a lone fish will be about, but we also saw schools of up to a hundred individuals darting about just below the surface.

The fish of the Galapagos are pretty much just as skittish as anywhere else. Which should come as no surprise given that the blue footed boobies are avid hunters that dive at high speed and will hunt fish up to 40 or 50 feet down.

Because the water was so rich with biomass from the deep currents, underwater photography — already hard — was a challenge in the Galapagos. You pretty much needed to dive down to get close enough to get a good picture that wasn’t cloudy.

Even in this picture, you can see how quickly the colors and details disappear with any distance.

It wasn’t until the third or fourth snorkel trip that I hit my photo-groove underwater.

While there were lots of holes to hide in, there was also lots of open areas on the rocky bottoms.

No surprise, there are creatures that occupy these areas, too. While the waters of the Galapagos lack coral, they are rich in algae.

This slate pencil urchin wanders about the open areas eating algae.

The Galapagos are also home to quite a few different kinds of sea stars.

This is a Blue Sea Star and it made for a very striking bit of color on top of the mottled lava and algae.

Today marked the first full day in the islands and our introduction to the rather intense schedule that would be typical for the rest of the week.

Wake up was at 6:45am with a full breakfast buffet (or whatever you wanted from the kitchen) from 7am to 8am.

Promptly at 8am, we departed for Punta Suarez on the westernmost tip of Española Island. For such excursions, we used zodiacs — inflatable boats with outboard motors commonly used by the military — to ferry from the Endeavor to the shore.

Española Island is composed of relatively rocky shores with the occasional beach where we landed. We then hiked around to stand atop 100 foot cliffs.

In between, we met many of the critters endemic — unique species only found in the Galapagos and, in some cases, only found on one of the islands — to this particular island. This was also the first island where we encountered the red marine iguanas, one fine specimen pictured at left.

They were everywhere on this island, obviously along the shore but also quite far inland as the females will wander way inland to dig a hole to lay eggs, sometimes losing more than 50% of their body mass on the journey.

Marine iguanas are exclusively vegetarian and are the only iguanas that forage in the water for their food, primarily the algae that grows on the rocks up to 30 feet under water.

But more about Marine iguanas later in a post dedicated to these magnificent creatures. Española had many other creatures, including some unique to the island.

Like, for example, the Sally Lightfoot (Grapsus grapsus) crab.

The Sally Lightfoot crabs are everywhere on every shore. They are the cleanup crew of the island and one of the first land critter to colonize fresh lava flows (marine iguanas and sea lions being the sea critters that climb up on the land and provide the crabs with one major food source). The crabs feed on basically anything dead or nearly dead, efficiently converting biomass into what will eventually become the soil that provides a toehold for plant life and other creatures.

Crabs have an exoskeleton and, like many such creatures, they shed that exoskeleton periodically as they grow. This is actually a shed exoskeleton. While the live crabs are quite brightly colored, their shed exoskeletons are even more intensely colored.

Lacking a fear of humans, the animals of the Galapagos do their animal things sometimes right under your feet. It quickly became quite apparent that I should keep my camera out, lens cap off and ready to shoot at all times!

While walking the trail on Española through a bit of fairly heavy brush, these two doves popped out and started fighting pretty much right on top of my feet.

Except, no, they weren’t fighting….

… they were mating.

Just as quickly as they appeared they disappeared off into the bushes on their merry dove way.

Española Island was also the first island where we encountered one of Darwin’s mockingbirds.

In this case, a Hood Mockingbird endemic to this particular island. When Darwin visited the islands, it was really the mockingbird specimens that he took with him that really catalyzed the notion that the animals of the islands had evolved to the unique environments presented by each island.

These guys were quite the characters. Not just fearless of us, they hood mockingbirds have been known to poke about a hiker’s clothes, backpacks or water bottles for food or water.

They are also fascinated by camera equipment. While I got a photo of a mockingbird eyeing me up, the videographer on our trip shot a video of a mockingbird inspecting his camera’s lens quite closely!

After hanging out with the mockingbirds, doves, and finches, we walked around to the cliff-tops to visit the waved albatross nesting grounds.

The waved albatross is a huge and beautiful bird that is optimized for long flight. With a wingspan of over 7 feet, the albatross is a bird made for soaring!

And soar it does!

After hatching, the young albatross is cared for by the parents for about 10 months. At the end of which, the young albatross quite literally walks to the edge of the cliff, throws itself off and 95% of the young learn to fly before hitting bottom.

Once the young take flight, they stay in the air or at sea for the next three to four years before returning to these cliff-tops to nest.

I wasn’t kidding when I said that the albatross literally throw themselves off the cliff.

While we were sitting and enjoying the cliff-top breeze, one albatross did exactly that. It walked over to the cliff, consider the wind and the “runway” for a moment, then took a sort of stumbling run right off the cliff!

For all that wingspan, the albatross has a fairly short and stubby set of legs. They simply can’t take off from the ground at all well. However, the birds can take off from the water and we saw well over one hundred albatross well off the coast foraging for food.

This also means that the albatross is not much of a nest builder. As a matter of fact, the female lays a single egg (per season or every other season) directly on the ground and will roll it about as it is incubated!

The cliffs on top of which the albatross live are magnificent. Being relatively young volcanic islands, the interface between land and sea is often sheer, extremely rough, and full of holes.

This leads to lots of holes and ledges. The ledges are oft used by various birds and the marine iguanas while the holes sometimes lead to giant jets of water like the one at right, a blowhole.

The albatross taking off was successful and at left is a picture of said bird flying in front of the cliffs just to the left of the blowhole.

The albatross have no fear of humans and many of them were “nesting” (more like, sitting around on the ground) very close, if not on, the designated path through the island.

Roger found all of the creatures to be thoroughly fascinating and consistently found lots of things that no one else had noticed.

We spent the afternoon snorkeling, but I really didn’t spend much time taking photos. We focused on making sure Roger was comfortable with snorkeling (being his first deep water snorkeling experience) and I figured out how to use the underwater camera.

All in preparation for the next day’s adventures!

But, it was impossible to walk back to the zodiac landing spot without running into at least one more photo opportunity (and, if you look in the Flickr set, about a dozen more).

In this case, a nazca booby preening….

Española Island is home to both nazca boobies and blue footed boobies. It is actually not uncommon to see a nazca raising a blue chick or vice-versa!

Taking anything but an extreme close-up or something in flight, it was almost impossible to shoot a photo of just a single species. As in this picture, there always seemed to be a lizard or iguana popping up in a bird picture or vice-versa!

We did spend the afternoon snorkeling around Gardner Islet on the northeast corner of Española.

This was the only photo I kept. Mostly, we used the time to get aclimated to snorkeling. In particular, it was the first time Roger has snorkeled in deep water (and only the second location he snorkeled).

He took to it like a fish. By the end of the week, Roger was diving down 20 to 30 feet to checkout the critters at the bottom!

Our first hike was on North Seymour Island, a small island just to the north of Baltra Island. During lunch, the Endeavor left the bay on Baltra and anchored just off shore of North Seymour.

Travel aside: The logistics of the trip were pretty intense; the Endeavor generally only moved when we were asleep or during meals (as needed to get to the next location). The guests were pretty much never confronted with the monumental amount of work going on around us to get from place to place, to portage folks to/from excursions, or to otherwise keep the boat livable and comfortable. Truly, the crew did a fantastic job of making us comfortable and providing access to the animals with minimal environmental impact.

The North Seymour island hike is a good introduction to the typical excursion in Galapagos. The overarching theme of every excursion was do no harm. Hikes were always on marked trails approved by the Galapagos National Park. Excursions were always broken into groups of 12 to 14 people with at least one licensed naturalist per group.

Animals come first. Many times on a hike, we would pause while some critter would take its merry time crossing our path.

At left is the first critter on this particular hike. A Galapagos Sea Lion doing a bit of sunning. It was pretty much exactly in the middle of where we entered the trail. Around we went and it really didn’t care.

That much, anyway. As you’ll see in a number of photos, sea lions are very curious beasts and, for some odd reason, they really like to look at you upside down as the character on the right was doing!

However, the wildlife of North Seymour was certainly not limited to sea lions!

What makes the animals of the Galapagos so fearless is that there simply are not any significant mammalian predators! Just about the all of the land predators are hawks, owls, and snakes, all of which are quite few and far between. Not exactly a fearsomely large bunch! That combined with relatively few years of man’s invasion means that most animals have simply never had to run away from anything.

Thus, the animals view people is more of an annoyance or curiosity than anything dangerous. Several times, a critter would simply walk up to one of us, have a sniff, and wander off!

Because there are no significant predators, the animals also have no real fear of each other. Many times, we saw multiple species interacting with each other in a passing fashion like the bird that has hitched around on the brown pelican at left.

When the critters weren’t ignoring us, they would put on a show!

This is a blue footed booby reacting to a mating call whistled by the naturalist. This guy was sitting on a rock dead center in the trail we were on. Didn’t move off his rock as close to 90 folks wandered by over the course of the next hour!

The boobies have a wonderful call, too. A sort of reedy whistling noise that isn’t shrill at all.

The Blue Footed Boobies are a bit of an odd bird on land. They have a great and complex mating dance, raise their young pretty much directly on the ground and — as demonstrated by the photo — have those wonderfully intensely blue feet.

As much as they are clowns on land, boobies are fantastic fliers and amazing aquatic hunters. Many times while snorkeling, you would hear a splash and then see a column of bubbles leading down 30 or 40 feet where a booby had dive bombed a fish. Occasionally, they would do this within a couple of feet of us!

Interestingly, boobies are one of the few birds that will seek out and raise the abandoned chicks of just about any ground nesting bird. We saw a blue footed booby caring for a nazca boobie chick!

Did I mention the booby dance?

This is a pair of boobies where the left bird is doing the booby courtship dance. It starts with a series of slow foot raises and whistles that, if the partner remains interested, escalates into a bit of hopping about, wing stretches, and neck movements. All while whistling their merry little booby tune.

North Seymour island is also home to both land and marine iguanas. This is a land iguana that wandered out of the low brush to munch on some clover or grass that was on the path.

Many times on the hike we had to step over one of these magnificent creatures. Land iguanas can grow up to several feet in length. While they generally move about fairly slowly, they do have the ability run rather quickly (as one guest discovered with quite the little “EEP!” as an iguana came barreling by at a fast run).

Land iguanas are primarily herbivores, but will chomp on the slow locust, centipede or other bug if it doesn’t move quickly enough.

Photo aside: Yup — it was starting to push towards sunset, hence the slightly golden hue of the light. Being at the equator in late spring, there was absolutely no shortage of photons ever.

When we visited the island, the mating season for the frigates was in full swing (as it were).

Thus, the male frigates all had their red neck pouches inflated to some degree and many were on full display as this one is.

At left, a male is trying to entice a female to move into his nest. Didn’t work out so well as she flew on within seconds of this photo being taken!

Lacking any predators or significant competition for food, the frigates of galapagos pretty much ignore each other save for an occasional squabble amongst males for the attention of a female.

Thus, you might assume that this is a picture of a family of related frigates. Not so, the female at left has a fairly young chick under its breast. Beyond that, the juvenile on the right and the youngster in the back (I just love the look on its face!) are chicks of two other females!

Roger, no surprises, was in heaven throughout the trip. Since we are homeschooling, we actually wrote the galapagos trip into his curriculum to fulfill his science requirements for this semester.

Roger managed to find several critters on the trip that were either rare or whose observed habits were beyond what the naturalists understood as expected. I will certainly highlight theses discoveries throughout the posts!

The Galapagos actually straddle the equator. Combined with being in the middle of the Pacific and an area that is known for utter calm — for the doldrums — the lighting was just wonderful. This little female laval lizard was sunning itself as we walked back to catch a zodiac ride back the Endeavor.

Of course, there was one last photo to be had before returning to the ship.

A brown pelican that was diving for fish.

From here, it was a short zodiac ride back to the ship, the daily wrap summarizing sites and animals in the lounge (with a cocktail, of course), dinner and bed!

After nearly three days of travel (SF -> Miami (overnight) -> Quito -> Guayaquil (overnight) -> Baltra, Galapagos), we arrived in the Galapagos Islands Baltra Airport to a sunny, warm, late morning.

Like almost all but the oldest islands in the Galapagos archipelago, Baltra is fairly flat with a central set of volcanic hills. The vegetation tends to be relatively low growing, the ground littered with volcanic rock and the place is generally inhospitable to mammals.

Even at the airport, it was already readily apparent that the animal life of the Galapagos was utterly unique in its general lack of fear of people. Waiting for customs, we were greeted by a handful of lava lizards, finches, and a Galapagos locust or two. Save for the locust, the critters were far, far, more concerned about territorial rights amongst their peers than they were of us.

We then took a short bus ride to the Endeavor, the National Geographic / Lindblad ship that would be our home for the next week.

Photo aside (there’ll be a lot of these):Along the way, I took a photo of the ship out the bus window. The bus was a good 1/2 mile — maybe 2/3rds — from the boat when I took this photo. It was hot and humid and there was considerable heat haze in the air. As a result, the full sized image of the boat looks more like a watercolor than a photograph! Neat!

After being greeted by the crew, a nice lunch, and safety orientation, we spent the afternoon hiking around North Seymour Island for our first real encounter with the amazing wildlife of the Galapagos.