Genovesa Island
Genovesa is the island where we can see red-footed boobies for sure; there are more than one hundred thousand pairs of red footed boobies nesting in this island. Today we saw a good number of them nesting on the bushes close to the beach where we disembarked. Some of them were incubating their eggs and some of them already had few-day-old hatchlings. It was great to see these featherless creatures hiding underneath their mothers’ wings. They watched us as if we were strange beings with long legs and cameras moving in front of them.
The adults are beautiful with bright red feet, blue bills, blue eye rings, and with pinkish-black colors at the base of their bills, giving them a nice contrast with their feet. We spent almost all morning watching these wonderful birds.
In the afternoon we walked to the top of the caldera of this island and saw some frigate birds with their red gular pouches inflated, Nazca boobies and one of the Darwin finch species, called sharp-billed ground finch, also known as the vampire finch. It is called by that name because this bird is accustomed to drink blood from Nazca boobies during extreme droughts; that is how they survive in these isolated and dry islands. We can not forget the short-eared owl that we saw at the end of the walk.
When we came back on board our Capitan lifted the anchor and took us for navigation around the island, watching some more birds and also the beautiful sun set outside the caldera of Genovesa Island.
Genovesa is the island where we can see red-footed boobies for sure; there are more than one hundred thousand pairs of red footed boobies nesting in this island. Today we saw a good number of them nesting on the bushes close to the beach where we disembarked. Some of them were incubating their eggs and some of them already had few-day-old hatchlings. It was great to see these featherless creatures hiding underneath their mothers’ wings. They watched us as if we were strange beings with long legs and cameras moving in front of them.
The adults are beautiful with bright red feet, blue bills, blue eye rings, and with pinkish-black colors at the base of their bills, giving them a nice contrast with their feet. We spent almost all morning watching these wonderful birds.
In the afternoon we walked to the top of the caldera of this island and saw some frigate birds with their red gular pouches inflated, Nazca boobies and one of the Darwin finch species, called sharp-billed ground finch, also known as the vampire finch. It is called by that name because this bird is accustomed to drink blood from Nazca boobies during extreme droughts; that is how they survive in these isolated and dry islands. We can not forget the short-eared owl that we saw at the end of the walk.
When we came back on board our Capitan lifted the anchor and took us for navigation around the island, watching some more birds and also the beautiful sun set outside the caldera of Genovesa Island.
