Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Travel Story

Birding in the Galapagos

More than just finches

After a guided tour of the Charles Darwin Research Centre we still had a couple hours to kill before heading out to where the Moby Dick lay at anchor. Besides, we needed some time to digest the huge lump of history and science that resident naturalist Heimi had just fed us.

From the volcanic origins of the Galapagos some 5 million years ago, to their role as a refuge for the evolution of unique species, to Darwin's flash of insight, Heimi covered all the bases. But, to be honest, the subtle differences in beaks and plumage among the finches – the little brown birds that clinched Darwin's theory of natural selection and secured his place in history – were not nearly as fascinating as the air-show going on in the harbour.

You don't have to be a dedicated bird watcher to appreciate the antics of birds in the Galapagos. Humans, it seems, are more or less invisible there; at least the local birds go about their lives as though we didn't exist. Betty and I found a bench on the Puerto Ayora waterfront on Isla Santa Cruz and settled down with a cool drink to watch the show.

Squadrons of brown pelicans glide past in precise military formation, their two-metre wings almost touching. With ungainly pouched beaks tucked back they are a picture of aerodynamic perfection. A few solo pelicans, fishing just offshore, dive straight down from heights of more than a hundred feet. With wings partly folded and beaks extended they look like Star-Wars fighters. Their dive ends in a great splash, a shallow plunge, and if all goes as planned, a pouch full of sea water containing a few fish.

The pelican is now faced with getting rid of the water without losing the fish, a critical manoeuvre that is exploited by the brown noddy. The noddy, a large tropical tern, perches on the pelican's head ready to snatch anything it can during the draining process. The pelican makes no effort to shake it off – apparently content to just float around and wait it out. Half a dozen pelicans, each with a noddy on its head, were still waiting when we headed out to our own dinner and bed aboard the Moby Dick.

After travelling through most of the night the boat dropped anchor off Isla Seymore. Breakfast at six, a short skiff ride ashore and we climb a narrow trail into a rookery where hundreds of blue-footed boobys and frigate birds have staked out nest sites. No need for stealth or telephoto lenses. The locals are much too busy courting and mating to even notice us strolling through their bedrooms. For the boobys home is where the egg is, and if it happens to be in the middle of the trail mom doesn't even flinch when you step over her. Her mate continues his courting without missing a beat, displaying first one and then the other bright blue foot.

But his comical slow-motion dance pales compared to the madcap courtship antics of the frigate birds. The large black males perch on palo santo bushes, inflate their brilliant red chest sacks, quiver and wail passionately skyward hoping to seduce an overhead mate. In the Galapagos, we discovered, life in all its intimate detail carries on as though we human voyeurs were not even there.

Although the boobies and frigatebirds share the same rookery they are most unlikely neighbours. The boobies, with compact bodies, short wings, and powerful bills are expert fishers. We watched them drop from surprising heights with wings completely folded, spearing fish with their stiletto-like bills as their streamlined bodies sliced into the water with hardly a ripple.

In contrast the larger, narrow-winged frigatebirds, are masters of flight but their preening glands do not secrete enough oil to waterproof their feathers. Unable to swim or dive they can snatch fish off the surface with their hooked beaks or snag the occasional flying fish in mid-air. But they live mostly by theft and piracy. Able to outmanoeuvre almost anything that flies they harass homeward-bound boobies and gulls until they regurgitate their catch, then swoop down and catch the stolen meal in mid-air. Even worse they habitually filch twigs from the nests of neighbouring red-footed boobies.

On Isla Espanola the boobies share the rookery with waved albatross. These magnificent birds, with wingspans up to eight feet, can spend years at sea without ever touching land. But when it’s time to mate this is where they return with their lifetime partner to raise a chick. Almost the entire world population of waved albatross nests on Espanola. During our visit in early June some couples were performing their ritualistic, bill-clacking courtship display, others tended an egg, rolling it from spot to spot without benefit of nest. A few downy grey chicks huddled in the shade of a low shrub waiting for mom or dad to show up with something to eat. They could have been waiting for a couple weeks.

We watch some returning parents come in for a landing – flaps down, webbed feet outstretched, loaded with half-digested oily fish, they invariably crash and roll. Dazed but unhurt the parent bird calls and somehow the right chick responds, rushes out and stuffs its head into the parent's beak. To the sound of much grunting the cargo of fish oil is transferred. The bloated, oil-stained chick waddles back to the nursery and the parent, unable to take off from land, walks to the edge of a cliff and launches itself into the wind for another two-week fishing trip. I hate to think what would happen to this vulnerable species if a land predator ever found its way into the albatross rookeries of tiny Espanola Island.

In the course of our island hopping we saw dozens of other bird species that had adapted to life in the Galapagos. Flocks of tropic birds trailing their two ridiculously long tail feathers, thirsty mockingbirds swarming us in search of a drink, gulls with night vision, gaudy pink flamingos, and of course finches and more finches.

The endemic swallow-tailed gull, the only nocturnal gull in the world, is a classic example of adaptation. These beautiful black-headed, grey and white birds spend the day perched along the rocky shoreline waiting to go fishing after dusk when the frigate birds are bedded down for the night. As generations of swallow-tails sought to avoid the frigates by fishing later and later in the evening those with the best night vision prevailed and passed on their genes. Today the large crimson-rimmed eyes of their successors allow the swallow-tailed gulls to dive for fish and squid in the dead of night and return with their catch without being harassed and robbed.

Of all the bizarre species of birds flamingos, whether wading in a Galapagos lagoon or planted in effigy on a suburban lawn, must be the most bizarre. Usually flighty and shy, those on Isla Santa Maria paid no attention to us. With pink bodies perched on long stilt-like legs they continued to feed with upside down heads only a few feet from the lagoon-side trail.

As I watched them, classic symbols of tropical wildlife, it occurred to me that two days earlier on Isla San Salvador we had watched penguins lined up on the shore of Sullivan Bay. Where else in the world can you see both flamingos and penguins on the same trip? Indeed nowhere else but in the Galapagos or a zoo.