about Salvador (sigh).
Today we got to visit the Charles Darwin Research Station, but unfortunately we’re just a few weeks too late to see its star, Lonesome George, the sole remaining Pinta Island tortoise. He refused to mate, apparently. He just wasn’t a horny tortoise, so his entire subspecies fizzled out when he did, in June. Poor guy, though — all that pressure. Imagine if you and only you were responsible for the continuation of your entire race. It was all too much for George. He preferred eating cucumbers.
Before humans sailed up, the Galápagos Islands were home to literally tens of thousands of giant tortoises. The numbers fell to near extinction but there’s now a recovery program run by the Charles Darwin Foundation, and it has been successful in bringing the numbers back up to over 20,000. You can walk around the research station and learn all about them, which, to be honest, isn’t really the most exciting thing in the world. They don’t do much, tortoises.
The blue-footed booby is perhaps the creature that most people look forward to encountering in the Galápagos. I won’t bother with any puns now and, trust me, neither will you once you’re here, because everyone does it for you, all over the place. You can’t walk down the street in Santa Cruz without being accosted by a man displaying his rail of ‘I heart Boobies’ T-shirts.
These weird, long-winged seabirds look a bit like penguins crossed with seagulls and they really do have bright blue feet, as though they’ve waddled across a wet painting of the ocean.
Our group was lucky enough to witness the mating ritual, which is a strange dance-off between the male boobies, a bit like men vying for a girl’s attention at a party. The female looks on from the perimeter, trying to decide which one she prefers as they flap and strut and lift each leg up in an effort to look masculine. The winner gets the girl and the privilege of building her a nest, and the loser goes off to try his luck with someone else.
It was during the enjoyment of this ritual that we also witnessed our first group of ‘serious birdwatchers’. You won’t see as many birdwatchers anywhere as you will in the Galápagos. As you can imagine, it is the holy grail for fans of things-with-wings and you can spot these people a mile off, usually because their telescopic lenses protrude into the corners of your humble iPhone snap shots, appearing way before you see the ‘serious birdwatcher’ in person.
What really sets a ‘serious birdwatcher’ apart from a regular birdwatcher, however, is the note-taking. Not content with photographing every single feather on the head of an Española mockingbird, or the butt-crack of a swallow-tailed gull, the ‘serious’ of the species must then whip out a clipboard and pen and busy themselves with noting why these feathers are so very different from the ones they shot yesterday, plus the date, time and exact location of each shot.
I know this because I stopped one man, part of a bird-watching tour group, and asked what they were all writing down. He was drooping under the weight of his equipment and his Canon lens was so long and so unconscionably wide, I’m pretty sure the Hubble Space Telescope would’ve had a tough job competing for close-ups.
‘We have a competition, with prizes when we get home,’ he said proudly. ‘We have to make sure we all get shots of different birds.’
‘But how do you tell the difference?’ I queried. ‘They all look the same to me!’
He frowned then, as though I was the most despicable racist ever to walk the face of the earth. ‘Every single one is unique,’ he said curtly, and lumbered on in his quest.
It seems I have a lot more to learn when it comes to discerning my feathers from my … feathers … and my carrots from my papayas, perhaps. But suffice to say that apart from the little problem of seasickness (which, by the way, was cured once Farzana took some special pills courtesy of
Today we got to visit the Charles Darwin Research Station, but unfortunately we’re just a few weeks too late to see its star, Lonesome George, the sole remaining Pinta Island tortoise. He refused to mate, apparently. He just wasn’t a horny tortoise, so his entire subspecies fizzled out when he did, in June. Poor guy, though — all that pressure. Imagine if you and only you were responsible for the continuation of your entire race. It was all too much for George. He preferred eating cucumbers.
Before humans sailed up, the Galápagos Islands were home to literally tens of thousands of giant tortoises. The numbers fell to near extinction but there’s now a recovery program run by the Charles Darwin Foundation, and it has been successful in bringing the numbers back up to over 20,000. You can walk around the research station and learn all about them, which, to be honest, isn’t really the most exciting thing in the world. They don’t do much, tortoises.
The blue-footed booby is perhaps the creature that most people look forward to encountering in the Galápagos. I won’t bother with any puns now and, trust me, neither will you once you’re here, because everyone does it for you, all over the place. You can’t walk down the street in Santa Cruz without being accosted by a man displaying his rail of ‘I heart Boobies’ T-shirts.
These weird, long-winged seabirds look a bit like penguins crossed with seagulls and they really do have bright blue feet, as though they’ve waddled across a wet painting of the ocean.
Our group was lucky enough to witness the mating ritual, which is a strange dance-off between the male boobies, a bit like men vying for a girl’s attention at a party. The female looks on from the perimeter, trying to decide which one she prefers as they flap and strut and lift each leg up in an effort to look masculine. The winner gets the girl and the privilege of building her a nest, and the loser goes off to try his luck with someone else.
It was during the enjoyment of this ritual that we also witnessed our first group of ‘serious birdwatchers’. You won’t see as many birdwatchers anywhere as you will in the Galápagos. As you can imagine, it is the holy grail for fans of things-with-wings and you can spot these people a mile off, usually because their telescopic lenses protrude into the corners of your humble iPhone snap shots, appearing way before you see the ‘serious birdwatcher’ in person.
What really sets a ‘serious birdwatcher’ apart from a regular birdwatcher, however, is the note-taking. Not content with photographing every single feather on the head of an Española mockingbird, or the butt-crack of a swallow-tailed gull, the ‘serious’ of the species must then whip out a clipboard and pen and busy themselves with noting why these feathers are so very different from the ones they shot yesterday, plus the date, time and exact location of each shot.
I know this because I stopped one man, part of a bird-watching tour group, and asked what they were all writing down. He was drooping under the weight of his equipment and his Canon lens was so long and so unconscionably wide, I’m pretty sure the Hubble Space Telescope would’ve had a tough job competing for close-ups.
‘We have a competition, with prizes when we get home,’ he said proudly. ‘We have to make sure we all get shots of different birds.’
‘But how do you tell the difference?’ I queried. ‘They all look the same to me!’
He frowned then, as though I was the most despicable racist ever to walk the face of the earth. ‘Every single one is unique,’ he said curtly, and lumbered on in his quest.
It seems I have a lot more to learn when it comes to discerning my feathers from my … feathers … and my carrots from my papayas, perhaps. But suffice to say that apart from the little problem of seasickness (which, by the way, was cured once Farzana took some special pills courtesy of
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