There is something mystic about an albatross (think Rime of the Ancient Mariner) and seeing one is always special.
Most of my sightings have been from the deck during a pelagic boat trip. Sometimes the sightings aren’t quality as the bird appears and disappears among the swells. Fleeting and always leaving you wanting more.
On the island of Espanola, I was about to have one of the closest encounters with albatrosses anywhere.
As with the boobies, the albatross were tame and we often had to walk around them as they sat in the trails.
A young albatross sitting in the trail. It was remarkable to see these largely pelagic birds on solid rock.
As we headed to Punta Suarez, an albatross dropped out of the air and made a rough landing. The male greeted his partner with head swerving, skypointing, bill-gapping, and bill fencing. Watching this from such close range made me feel like I was in a BBC documentary. Now all we need was Sir David Attenborough to narrate the behavior.
A mated pair bonding. The male is bill-gapping. An albatross in flight is a beautiful sight.
At Punta Suarez we paused to take in the sights and I had time to sketch the scene before me.
While visiting the largest island of the Galápagos, Isabela. At 1,771 square miles, it is larger than all the other islands of the Galápagos combined. The population of Isabela is about 2,000.
We took the Panga to the dock at busy Puerto Villamil but we needed transportation to get up to the wet highlands to look for some Galápagos specialties.
Enter Papi and his painted “Chicken Truck”. Papi is a jovial man with a striking resemblance to St. Nick (come Christmas, he dresses up as Santa Claus to the delight of the youth of Isabela).
On the eight side panels he painted some of the fauna of the island: pelican, penguin, marine iguana, boobies, sea turtle,sealion, and tortoise.
A field sketch of our ride up to the highlands in the Chicken Truck. This was a challenge to do on bumpy country roads.
We flew from Quito to get to the Galápagos. But how did birds get to the islands?
We guess that some flew, some swam, and others arrived on rafts of vegetation pushed to the Galápagos by the cold Humboldt Current.
There were two flightless birds I was very much looking forward to seeing and both are found nowhere else in the world. The Galápagos are truly the Enchanted Islands when it comes to endemic species.
I grew up on a street named Cormorant Court so these aquatic fish-hunters have always fascinated me. On the California coast we have three species of flighted cormorants: Brandt’s, double-crested, and pelagic. And the cormorant I really wanted to see is the truly ocean dependent flightless cormorant.
We woke up on near the “seahorse’s mouth” on Isla Isabela. As the night turned to day from the deck of the Nemo III, vertical dark “rocks” turned into roosting flightless cormorants.
After an early breakfast at six, we were boarding the panga by 6:40 to get a closer look at the cormorants.
This is the world’s largest cormorant. I guess you can evolve to be bigger when you don’t need to fly. This is the only flightless cormorant and it is only found around the Galápagos islands of Fernandina and Isabela.
Flightless cormorant on Isla Isabela. Photographed from the panga.
Around the “Seahorse’s Mouth” we had some quality panga time with this amazing endemic, both preening on the rocks and swimming in the bay.
Although they are flightless they still need to dry and preen their wings.
After spending time with the cormorants, we boarded the Nemo III and headed over to Fernandina Island to look for another flightless endemic.
We would be birding from the deck of the catamaran, looking for a vertical black and white rock we were hoping to turn into a Galápagos penguin.
This small penguin is the only penguin found north of the equator (but just barely). It is certainly the most northerly or southerly if in the northern hemisphere, penguin as well as the only tropical penguin.
Before long our guide Willy spotted a lone penguin roosting in the rocks with two brown noddies.
A not so great view of my first penguin species.
We had much better views on Islabela. Some were roosting and preening while others were swimming and foraging.
I had seen the red-footed booby before on the coast of California and brown booby is also an infrequent visitor to the coast of the Golden State. But now I was about to see the red-footed really close as well as two other boobies, which would be lifers.
How do you know it’s a red footed? It’s perched in a tree (and it has red feet). This booby is within touching distance her on Genovesa.
One of these boobies is the poster bird of the Enchanted Islands: the blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii).
You will find this booby on t-shirts, posters, signs, carved figurines, and other tourist detritus in the gifts shops.
After landing at Baltra and transferring to our catamaran, the Nemo III, our first stop was North Seymour Island.
North Seymour has a large population of blue-footed boobies and swallow-tailed gulls.
At our landing site we were greeted by a sleeping Galápagos sealion and a preening swallow-tailed gull.
What is amazing about the Galápagos is that the wildlife seems to have little fear of humans. We experienced this over and over again.
If you’re not careful you can end up stepping on a booby in the Galápagos. In this case a Nazca booby. (Disclaimer: no boobies were stepped on during the making of this post!)
The word booby is derived from the Spanish word “bobo”, meaning stupid. Perhaps because of the bird’s tame behavior made them easy to catch by hungry sailors.
At North Seymour, the blue-footeds were in the middle of the trail in the midst of skypointing and wing displays which are their mating rituals. Watching these boobies made me feel like I was in a BBC nature documentary and Sir David Attenborough would step out from a nearby bush at any moment!
To blue-footeds in mid-trail in mid-courtship.
On the following day we had more booby encounters. This time at the island of Genovesa at the Prince Phillip’s Steps. The most common trailside booby was the Nazca booby (Sula granti), another lifer, with red-footeds also in the trees.
A quick sketch of a Nazca on Genovesa that somehow looks like a muppet of the Fraggle Rock era.
The Nazca is one of the largest boobies of the Galápagos. They are mainly white with a black mask (they were once called masked boobies until they were later split). Out of the three boobies that occurs in the Galápagos, the Nazca flies further out that the blue-footed to forage.
Among the sand and leaf litter, in a circle of non-guano, Nazcas were nesting on the ground. Nazcas always lay two eggs. Usually only one bird survives, the first hatched, which outcompetes its younger sibling.
Our vessel for the Galápagos cruise was the catamaran the Nemo III.
It held all thirteen passenger (about half were birders), two guides, and a crew of six. This is like a cruise ship at a smaller scale.
The boat can accommodate 16 passengers in eight cabins. The small galley produced three hearty meals a day which was much appreciated after a day of birding and island exploring.
This catamaran would be our home away from home for eight wonderful days.
Relaxing on the bow while cruising between the islands of the Galápagos.
Over our ten day cruise visiting nine of the Enchanted Islands I sketched from the Nemo III as well as a few sketches of the catamaran from the shore.
While anchored at Genovesa, I sketched our sister ship, the Nemo II.A continuous line sketch from the port side. Red-footed boobies were getting a free ride on the front railing. A sketch of the Nemo III from shore on Floreana.
Corvid Sketcher 