Another wonderful day in paradise! The island of the birds was at its best, ornamented with many male frigate birds with their red gular sacs fully inflated. Many of the male frigates are still trying hard to attract the attention of the females while other males with deflated pouches have already built nests. We also observed many swallow-tailed gulls. Some are still nesting, some already have offspring. It is very delightful to observe different ages of swallow-tailed gull chicks. Nazca boobies were also seen, some of them were with chicks as well. The whole place looks like a nursery! In Genovesa we can admire one of the largest colonies of red-footed boobies in Galapagos. Finches, mockingbirds, herons, tropicbirds and even owls complete the most extraordinary natural setting. As you can see Genovesa Island is a very special one, it is a real paradise for a nature lover and especially for ornithologists. It has so many beautiful bird species that it is certainly very difficult to choose one as a favorite.
Red-footed boobies are the only booby species that nest in trees; red mangroves and incense trees constitute their favorite nesting and roosting places. Prehensile feet allow them to grab very well on branches. Something really interesting about red-footed boobies natural history is a fact about their distribution in the archipelago. It depends directly on the distribution of their main predator, the Galapagos hawk. Genovesa Island has many interesting ecological characteristics, one of them is that Galapagos hawks do not live on the island, therefore many red-footed boobies live there. We can say in simple words that this small island is the largest red-footed boobery in the whole archipelago.
In the Galapagos Islands, 95% of the red-footed boobies are brown and only 5% are white. Curiously, the opposite happens in the rest of the world, where the proportion goes the other way! Why? Specialists do not have an answer yet. The beautiful bird shown in today's picture is an example of the unusual and beautiful white morph red-footed booby.
