An unremarkable, though rather pleasant, picture of the creek near my parent’s house in Missouri.

What is remarkable or, at least, exceptional about this photo is that it was taken about 30 seconds after I fell in the creek (slick rock) and dunked both my iPhone and my Canon DSLR (t1i) underwater for a good 5 to 10 seconds. While bummed that it happened, I wasn’t really angry — it was inevitable and, given how much joy the various photos have brought the family and how much educational value they have had for Roger, the risk has been worth it.

This was the last photo the camera took for quite some time and, at the time, the last photo I expected it to ever take. My iPhone was in similar dire straits. Upon removal from my pocket, it had flipped out; cycling between screens, waking sleeping, etc.. Water drained out of the headphone port.

OOops.

Same with the camera; had to dump water out through the lens mount, through the battery compartment and out the SD card slot.

Leaving them in a sunny spot in an air conditioned, and thus relatively dry, house, the iPhone started working just fine, though the camera lens had a bunch of moisture on the inside. That dissipated within a few days and, save for the occasional mysterious “GPS on all the time” mode, the iPhone seems completely normal now.

The camera took longer to return to normalcy. For the first few days, it would power on to a “set the time” screen and I would then turn it off, remove the battery, open every door/compartment/etc, and let it dry some more. After the first week, it mostly just worked, but the flash stopped popping up for a while. Now even that seems to work.

It seems I got lucky. This time.

What is often lost in all the nature documentaries is that every critter must die eventually. More often than not, said deaths are generally brutal.

One of our favorite beaches is Bean Hollow State Beach south of Half Moon Bay along the northern coast of California. Dog friendly and abundant with wildly different environment ranging from sandy beaches to monumental rocks, to flats full of tide pools with the occasional freshwater pool.

While visiting, it was mentioned that the southern entrance to the state park — we have always stuck to the northern (but will head south because of the awesome beach) — led to an alcove where a dead whale had washed ashore.

This was, of course, far too tempting of a site for Roger to resist, so down the road we headed.

What we found, though, was absolutely monumental. And stinky. Very, very, stinky.

The creature that had washed up was huge. Hundred+ feet long and 80 feet long, 75 tons, and clearly dead for a while as there were bits and pieces here and there.

And the smell. We made the mistake of parking down wind. Doh!

Roger made it just about 2/3rds of the way to the carcass before heading back to the car.

After we hit the road, we drove upwind and found a path that we could walk upon to overlook the scene without having to smell it.

Regardless, the stench stuck with us on the drive home. Or not. It may have largely been Ruby’s (the Dog’s) wet doggy stench from having waded in a couple of swampy puddles.

Sadly, it wasn’t just the one adult whale. On the shore was a whale fetus — I hesitate to say baby since it was so relatively small and pale — that was also dead.

Clearly, this was a mother whale and baby. Given the presence of the floating mass of intestines and the general destruction of the carcass, the whale likely didn’t die naturally. My completely uneducated guess is that it was hit by a cargo ship, an all too common death amongst these magnificent creatures.

I’m pretty sure this is a blue whale.

Sad though such a death is, I can’t help but consider — and explained to Roger — the unbelievable energy source such a carcass is to that particular coastal area. If the carcass were left to decay in that location, it would both take years prior to being fully decayed and those many tons of flesh and bone would likely grossly increase the population of crabs, birds, and other critters.

I’m going to try to contact the park services to find out what they might do– if anything. If the carcass is left to lie (or blown up to accelerate the process), we will revisit the site in the near future to see what the critter density looks like.

Apparently, this is the first blue whale to wash ashore in Northern California in more than 30 years. The Santa Cruz Sentinel has an article about the event.

Earlier this year, we went on a trip to the Galapagos with Linblad (National Geographic) with a goal of immersing our 9 year old son, Roger, in the natural laboratory that is the Galapagos Archipelago.

And, no surprise, one goal was to bring back tons of pictures as it is exceedingly unlikely that we will ever re-visit the Galapagos.

I don’t remotely pretend to be a competent photographer, but I do OK and I have dedicated some time to understanding the science of photography and learning the limits of my equipment. One limit, in particular, was no really long lenses of great quality. The 55-250 is a great lens for the price, but isn’t that long, nor of the world class quality that a world class trip demands.

Thus, I picked up the Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM Lens
. That is, a zoom telephoto L-series lens with a minimum zoom of 100mm @ f/4.5, a maximum of 400mm @ f/5.6 that features image stabilization.

I.e. one serious piece of glass.

All images taken with a Canon T1i
and, obviously, the aforementioned lens.

Juvenile Flamingo (400mm, f/14, 1/500th, ISO: 500)

Of course, with such a long lens, the first question is “How well did it perform in capturing images of things really far away?!?”

In short, the lens performed very well in this regard. The flamingo at left was, maybe, 80 meters away; 200+ feet.

The lens focuses quickly at that distance and the camera + lens generally do a good job of selecting an appropriate aperture and ISO to achieve a pleasant picture (I generally use a fast shutter speed when shooting wildlife that is moving about).

Dolphins (400mm, f/5.6, 1/1000th, ISO: 250)

Of course, less than 100m is still pretty close. One morning, we awoke at about 6:30am to find the boat completely surrounded by dolphins swimming, jumping and doing the occasional tail walk.

However, the dolphins weren’t coming any closer than more than 1/2 of a mile away!

The 100-400mm let me capture several great photos of these magnificent creatures going airborne.

One neat advantage that I hadn’t thought of initially was that the lens acted as a very good quality auto-focusing 400mm (640mm, really, with the compact sensor) binoculars with the ability to quickly save anything of interest!

Stilt (375mm, f/5.6, 1/1000th, ISO: 1600)

The T1i performs well at high ISO. Certainly, many times better than the Rebel XT (my prior body). Combined with the 100-400mm, I was able to frame and capture photos in low light quite effectively, too.

While I would rather have the luxury of taking such photos with the 300mm or 400mm f/2.8 lenses, they are both heavier and significantly more expensive than the 100-400mm.

And it isn’t like the 100-400mm lens is any kind of a light weight. At ~3 pounds, I was definitely feeling the weight of hiking all day with said lens hanging at my side.

Aside: I used a Luma Loop throughout the trip and will never ever use any other strap. It is the perfect strap, leaving the camera hanging comfortably in the most natural reach-and-grab position I could imagine while also staying out of the way when shooting. Brilliant addition to anyone’s kit.

I actually didn’t bring a tripod, knowing that we would be moving around on a regular basis and it would just be a pain. The combination of excellent image stabilization with the high ISO performance of the T1i meant I could get away with it.

Moon (400mm, f/5.6, 1/80th, ISO: 200)

One night, I was standing on the top deck of the boat under the moon and asked, “I wonder if I can photograph the moon”.

So, I grabbed my camera and did.

This image was taken from the top deck of a moving ship with a handheld camera.

Unbelievable. I’m still amazed that the technology has evolved so much that someone with relatively little clue can pull off an image like that.

Note that when shooting the moon, I have found that you pretty much have to put the camera in full manual mode. Lock the ISO at 200, go for about a 1/80th of a second exposure and leave the aperture as wide open as possible — the moon is relatively flat from N bazillion miles away, after all).

Fly Catcher (275mm, f/5.6, 1/1000th, ISO: 250)

The 100-400mm lens can both focus closely enough and is sharp enough that it can be used as a sort of long range macro lens or long range portrait lens.

This little Fly Catcher (maybe 4″ tall) was pretty far away, hanging out near the top of a tree. It let me grab one frame in this pose before flitting off somewhere else.

The result is pretty darned good! Sharp, with pleasant background blur.

And that particular image was a crop of about 1/5th of the original frame.

All in all, the Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM Lens worked flawlessly on the Galapagos trip and enabled me to capture many wonderful and memorable pictures that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

Since the trip, the lens developed a fault with the image stabilizer. The IS would kick in and make the image “jump” every second, eventually crashing and causing the camera to show an error. Canon is repairing it under warranty and I’m entirely confident I’ll have a fully working copy of the lens back shortly.

Alternatively, the 70-200mm f/2.8L
lens is absolutely fantastic (and one that I’ll get someday) and combined with the 2x extender
, it probably would have performed well, though not as sharp as the 100-400. As I have the 100mm f/2.8 macro, I already had a “fast” lens in that range that works exceptionally well. Having the longer reach of the 400mm and the larger aperture in the mid-range of the 100-400mm was ultimately the deciding factor. That and also that the 70-200 + extender would have been nearly $1,000 more expensive!

Mid-Missouri is a hummingbird destination.

That is, these tiny, but incredibly energetic, birds treat mid-Missouri as a destination for breeding and, as a result, are extremely territorial in their presence (I’m still trying to grab a few good frames of the epic battle around the feeder amongst 4 hummers).

Apparently, other hummers aren’t the only territorial species in this particular area….

While watching hummers feed upon the shore line pond flowers, I noticed that the birds were quite commonly being buzzed by dragonflies!

That dragonfly in the upper left followed ever move of the hummingbird and, beyond that, dove in to seemingly tag the hummer regularly. This annoyed the hummingbird considerably and much aerobatics came with each buzz-by from the dragonfly.

We spent a good chunk of saturday wandering about mid-Missouri, touring the various homes and towns of my Mother’s family.

While wondering about Mom’s home town of Jamestown, Missouri, we found Cave Springs Road.

“Road” is a bit of an exaggeration; it is a rather winding gravel/dirt road through the hills and river bottoms of the area. It also happens to pass by one of my Grandparent’s old houses.

While continuing on said road, I caught something out of the corner of my eye and asked my sister (who was driving) to stop the car.

Upon seeing this pond, our cousin from Austria exclaimed, “This pond is being invaded by Doctor Seuss plants.”.

The plants do look a bit Seuss-esque. Especially the seed pods.

They are American Lotus or Yellow Lotus. While considered a native species, they are extremely invasive and can easily entirely consume a pond in vegetative growth within a few years (depending on pond depth).

While “native”, the working theory is that these plants are not really naturally propagated nearly as widely as they are without human intervention.

In particular, much of the plant is edible. As far as anyone can determine, American Indians would carry seeds and/or roots of the plant as they moved about, planting any random ponds to establish a food source if the tribe happened to pass that way again.

Growing up, my Mom remembers collecting the dried seed pods each fall. The pods were used as decoration in wreaths and table decorations.

I remember Lotus pods in table decorations for Thanksgiving, Christmas and other family gatherings while I was growing up. When dried, the pods make wonderful natural rattles that seem to keep tiny tots happy for a good bit.

My Mom wanted to plant some lotus on our new pond at our new house in the ’80s, but everyone said it was a bad idea. Just a bit of research confirmed exactly why.

Lotus is an incredibly invasive plant. It will dominate a pond entirely, completely covering the pond in all areas where the water depth isn’t too great. Because of the vast amount of vegetation created by this plant, it will also quickly fill in the typical shallow farm pond to the point of taking over the entire surface.

It is, though, an exquisite and useful plant.

There is a bit of swampy area on the property that could easily be dug out to form a mini-pond. It would be an ideal (i.e. isolated) spot for a Lotus infestation.

I could easily imagine painting little eyes on all those seeds for a halloween haunted house…

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.