A beautiful, uniform, slightly overcast light blue sky awaited us today on this idyllic small island. With an area of just 5.4 square miles, Genovesa is considered to be the real island of the birds. It is estimated that around half a million birds call this island, of tiny surface area, home!
It is very difficult to describe with words the fascination one feels to be in the middle of such an explosion of beauty and abundance. Frigate birds, gulls, Darwin finches, herons, mockingbirds, doves and boobies are everywhere you look. Birds are seen in the sky, on the floor, on the rocks, literally in every place you see, you have a bird to watch. With such a huge amount of birds around, it is not unusual on this day for the odd guest, or even naturalist (including myself), to get hit with something funny by some birds passing-by. I had a nice white guano-pattern as an ornament on my hat the whole morning! Cheerfully, we were joking about the fact that we have to laugh covering our mouths while on the island, just in case unsuspected "projectiles" fall from the sky. And believe me, here you have pretty good chances to be baptized: in many regions of Ecuador getting hit by guano is considered a sign of good luck. Conclusion: some of us got really lucky today!
Later on in the morning some clouds disappeared and we had a marvelous clean, blue sky. In today's picture one can almost imagine how Nazca boobies see the world they inhabit. A fascinating world we were privileged to share with them today.
