This island was FILLED with pelicans on the hunt.
Galapagos– Pelican hunting
Category: Travels
Galapagos-Tortoise
These guys are huge and OLD. Our naturalist said this one is over 150 yrs old. They said they were hunted by sailors because they can go almost a year without eating. So they would stack them up live in the hold and pull one out for dinner. They were alive so they wouldn’t spoil. The darwin center has a program to repopulate the various islands with Tortoise.
Galapagos –Sea Lion
THis guy was “singing” away and posing. It was a beautiful island. This is the iconic GALAPAGOS Sea LION not to be confused with the California seal. THese guys have ears (you can se it on the right side)
Galapagos–All tucked in
This fur sea lion was all tucked into the crannies of this tide pool.
Galapagos-Blue Footed Boobie chicks
THis male is watching the nest. Yes that’s the nest…a lil indentation in the dirt. Look closely and you’ll see TWO chicks. The big one on the right and the the lil one on the left. Our naturalist said that the eggs are often hatched two to three days apart. The first one gets a big head start. This one kept snapping at the lil one and he even pushed him out of the nest. He crawled back in. The naturalist said that there is an imaginary 18″ around the nest hole that they will protect the baby in. If it’s outside of that range they usually won’t defend it and the predator birds will eat it.
Galapagos-RED footed Boobie
TH
he red footed boobies nest in trees and can use their feet to hold onto branches. The grey chested birds are females…the ales have white chests.
Galapagos Hawk
This was one of the few non tagged hawks we saw. It must be younger. Several years ago the powers at be decided to poison all the rats. But then it killed the hawks that ate the rats. So then they tried to collect all the Hawks before they poisoned the rats again. (I know what your saying–how are they going to catch all a the hawks? Of COURSE THEY DIDNT! )So round two of killing off the hawks…