Genovesa Island
This time of the year, “Bird Island” is teeming with sea birds! This is the cool season and the seas are especially productive; hence it is the reproductive season for the swallowtail gulls, the great frigates, the Nazca and red footed boobies and the wedge-rumped storm petrels on Genovesa. It is easy to believe the estimate that a million birds inhabit this northern island.
Today we spent the entire day on Genovesa. In the morning we disembarked on a tiny coral beach, stopped to put on walking shoes and had a fabulous stroll, first along the sandy beach margin and then across spiny rough lava. In the salt bushes and mangrove shrubs we found the nests of red-footed boobies and frigate birds. Most of the nests contained single, fat, white fluffy chicks. It takes constant fishing by both parent birds to keep up with the insatiable appetite of the baby red-foots and frigates.
Swallowtail gulls and Nazca boobies nest directly on the ground in the sand among lava or coral pebbles. The endemic gulls lay only a single egg and the tiny grey ball of fluff that hatches after a few weeks of incubation is extremely well camouflaged (see today’s photo). Thus they escape predation by the marauding frigatebirds. Nazca boobies lay two eggs, and if both hatch, the stronger and larger of the two will push its sibling out of the nest, an action that has been labelled fratricide or siblicide.
The afternoon walk up Prince Phillip’s Steps took us through a leafless palo santo forest where we found more red-foots and frigates, then along an open lava field where Nazca boobies were courting and beginning to lay their eggs. Hundreds of fluttering storm petrels, a few doves and finches and a couple of hunting owls were also spotted. Today we must have seen several hundred thousand of the million birds that nest here!
This time of the year, “Bird Island” is teeming with sea birds! This is the cool season and the seas are especially productive; hence it is the reproductive season for the swallowtail gulls, the great frigates, the Nazca and red footed boobies and the wedge-rumped storm petrels on Genovesa. It is easy to believe the estimate that a million birds inhabit this northern island.
Today we spent the entire day on Genovesa. In the morning we disembarked on a tiny coral beach, stopped to put on walking shoes and had a fabulous stroll, first along the sandy beach margin and then across spiny rough lava. In the salt bushes and mangrove shrubs we found the nests of red-footed boobies and frigate birds. Most of the nests contained single, fat, white fluffy chicks. It takes constant fishing by both parent birds to keep up with the insatiable appetite of the baby red-foots and frigates.
Swallowtail gulls and Nazca boobies nest directly on the ground in the sand among lava or coral pebbles. The endemic gulls lay only a single egg and the tiny grey ball of fluff that hatches after a few weeks of incubation is extremely well camouflaged (see today’s photo). Thus they escape predation by the marauding frigatebirds. Nazca boobies lay two eggs, and if both hatch, the stronger and larger of the two will push its sibling out of the nest, an action that has been labelled fratricide or siblicide.
The afternoon walk up Prince Phillip’s Steps took us through a leafless palo santo forest where we found more red-foots and frigates, then along an open lava field where Nazca boobies were courting and beginning to lay their eggs. Hundreds of fluttering storm petrels, a few doves and finches and a couple of hunting owls were also spotted. Today we must have seen several hundred thousand of the million birds that nest here!
