by Jerold Last
The Frigate Birds group included Suzanne and me, as well as Bruce and Robert. In deference to Robert’s biological clock dictating an essential afternoon nap, he and Bruce would only join the group for the morning island hopping tours. Barbara and Gretchen Kaufman, a middle-aged German couple named Dieter and Inge Schultz, an older retiree couple from Australia named Weaver, and a South American couple in their mid-thirties named Sanchez rounded out the group. The chief guide warned us we’d probably be adding a few more members to our group if anyone were unhappy in their initially assigned group. I noted Eduardo and his companion were assigned to one of the Spanish-speaking groups, which also included Raul Vonhorst.
The Santa Cruz’s first stop would be at North Seymour Island, the closest of the Galapagos chain to Baltra, known locally as South Seymour Island. At 3 PM we boarded the little Zodiac taxi, which took our group of about a dozen all the way up to the shore. We all took one step onto the rocks and hopped from there to the beach.
People started introducing themselves on the Zodiac and finished the job on the beach. The Schultz’s looked and sounded like German or Austrian characters from a Grade-B spy movie from the 40s, complete with lederhosen, blouses, and hiking boots. In a thick Teutonic accent Dieter introduced himself and his wife. “We’re Dieter and Inge Schultz, that’s S-c-h-ultz, passionate birders, what you’d call bird watchers, from Munchen. This trip is the realization of our dream of a lifetime.”
The Kaufman sisters and I told everyone who we were and where we were from. Señor Sanchez introduced himself and his wife a bit more formally with a strong Spanish accent, “We are Manuel and Maria Sanchez from Montevideo, Uruguay. This is our very special fifth anniversary vacation splurge. We promised ourselves we would see the world before we become too old to travel comfortably. Please excuse our poor English but this is a great opportunity for us to practice with native speakers.”
The last pair identified themselves. “I’m Victor Weaver and this is moy woife Emily. We’re tourists ‘ere in South America coming from Gungellen in South Australia. Gungellen’s a ranching and farming town in the Outback, a long way from anywhere else. Back ‘ome we both used to teach biology in what you blokes would call ‘igh school in The States. We promised ourselves one day we’d come to see what we’d only read about in textbooks about Darwin and evolution. This ‘ere batch of islands is right at the very top of our bucket list. So ‘ere we are.”
By then our biologist guide had herded us into some semblance of order on the beach. She started to tell us what was here and why we were going to see what we’d see.
“This is one of the smallest islands in the archipelago and is one of the only islands that isn’t of volcanic origin. It was literally lifted up from the bottom of the sea by a geologic process known as seismic uplift of an undersea lava formation. The island was named for the British Lord Hugh Seymour, and is just north of Baltra, which is also called South Seymour; hence the name.
“It’s low and flat, with a lot of low and bushy vegetation on the island. Tuff grasses and Manzanita bushes dominate because of the sandy soil. A few meters from the shore there are steep cliffs with lots of ledges that make fine perches for swallowtail gulls and tropical birds. North Seymour has ideal conditions for bird breeding and hosts the largest colony of your namesake frigate birds in the Galapagos. You should all expect to see a whole lot of birds of several different species here.”
Less than 50 meters in from our landing area, we got up close and personal with a nesting blue-footed boobie bird. He didn’t seem to be bothered in the slightest by the sudden appearance of a dozen tourists standing next to his nest and staring at him and his egg. Just as the biologist would be telling us later this afternoon, he wasn’t afraid of humans. We were just his daily entertainment as he casually counted us before returning to thoughts of whatever fish dinner he’d been daydreaming about before we arrived. We did note that he was extremely attentive to his egg. He remained on or in its immediate vicinity for as long as we watched him.
I’d worried needlessly about not bringing my binoculars on this outing. As we bird watched throughout the length of our walk, the blue-footed boobies on the ground, the masked boobies in the trees, and the frigate birds in the Manzanita bushes were all close enough to touch, bump into, or trip over. As long as we obeyed the “look, but don’t touch” edict they didn’t seem to care whether humans were there or not. Occasionally, we’d see a blue-footed bird with a fish in their mouth crash land near a nest and share its wiggling prize with the egg-sitting spouse. Occasionally, a baby-sitting spouse would get a hunk of fish and the fledgling kiddies would eat chewed and regurgitated fish chowder donated by one of the parental units. Both male and female boobies took turns being the egg- or baby-sitting parental unit or the family hunter-fisher.
We stopped for a moment to get a closer look at the birds and our surroundings. Suzanne took a long look around, studying the vast Pacific Ocean surrounding us. “For some reason I keep thinking of the line from Coleridge’s old poem the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, ‘Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink’. We’re standing on a desert island surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean. Despite all the water in the ocean, none of it is drinkable by humans. This must have been a terrible place to be shipwrecked in the bad old days. On the other hand, the look and texture of this place is wonderful. What does it remind you of, Roger?”
I picked up a handful of sand, letting it dribble back to the ground through my fingers. We were surrounded by a cacophony of birdcalls and the pitter-patter of little lizard feet scurrying off through the bushes. “We could be standing almost anywhere in the high desert of southeastern California. It certainly doesn’t sound like it, but it looks and feels the same with all the sand, bushes, and shrubs, and the almost complete absence of anything green. All that’s missing are the high Sierra Mountains to the east.”
Suzanne looked around us, slowly making a complete revolution as she scanned the terrain. She shook her head. “This island feels a whole lot different to me than the California high desert. There’s prickly pear cactus and Manzanita everywhere, just like California desert. But look over there. You can see the saltbushes and those funny grey and silver Palo Santo trees, which we’d never see in California. But it isn’t just what I’m seeing and hearing. It’s what I’m feeling, too. There’s lots of rock and weird looking geology everywhere. To me, it feels more like being on the moon than being back home,”
Our guide, Juana, led the group on a 2-Km hike over the loop trail. We navigated the local trail, a mixture of sand half of the time and rock the other half, to see the island. The island itself wasn’t much, but the local animal life, especially the birds, was abundant and exotic. The guide promised us a briefing on the underlying biology during our walk, as well as when we returned to the ship, but in the meantime she pointed out some of the most interesting species to be observed.
Just before we turned a curve along the beach she suggested, “Be as quiet as possible from here on so as not to scare the locals on the beach we’re coming to. They’re a little shy.“
About a dozen feet away on the beach was a pack of sea lions. “The small ones are this year’s calves, maybe a month or two old,” whispered the guide. “The big male on the left is the bull of the pack. He mates with all of the females in this group and protects them from any predators they might encounter. The females do most of the fishing to feed themselves, daddy, and the calves.”
We walked carefully by the pack trying not to disturb them. “Oiy, what’s that?” said a startled Emily Weaver in her normal voice as we saw a fast moving large lizard-like creature scamper from the sand into the trees lining the beach. The creature was brightly colored with a long tail.
Juana explained, “You just saw the first of many marine iguanas you’ll be seeing on this island and several others. They eat a lot of the local insects around here. We’ll be walking along the beach for a few more minutes then we’ll walk inland to see some
of the classic bird habitat in the trees. Finally we’ll come back to this beach where the water taxi will pick us up to return to the ship. We have about two hours to see the island so there’s plenty of time to answer questions. How many of you have looked at the bird list of the Galapagos Islands we left in all of your cabins?”
Pretty much everybody’s hand went up into the air.
“Great!” said the guide. “I’ll expect you to tell me what kind of bird I’m pointing at as we start seeing the nesting areas along the trail. North Seymour is famous for the roosting places for several of the local sea birds. Let’s see how many we can spot today.”
The first birds we saw were easy to identify. Inge Schultz pointed to a bunch of birds with their nests on the ground. “All of those birds sitting on their eggs and making all that noise have bright blue feet. I’ll take a chance and say we’re looking at a flock of blue-footed boobies.”
The guide smiled. This was the easy part. “Absolutely correct.”
The mating season was in full swing, with breeding pairs of blue-footed boobies going through their complex mating ritual. Juana explained as we watched, “They offer each other gifts, like fresh fish they’ve caught. They make a lot of noise, whistling and honking. If you watch you’ll see them stretch their necks towards the sky, spread their wings, and actually dance. The dancing is to show off how blue their feet are. Somehow or other this species works very hard to keep the gene for blue feet intact while they make lots of little boobies.
“Another oddity about the blue-footed boobies is that the males tend to the eggs and look after the babies while the females get to go out and play, especially if you think fishing is fun. The females’ job of raising the family is shared after they lay their eggs. The poor guys get to do a lot of the work after the eggs are out!”
Dieter took over the bird lesson. “The blue-footed boobies are pretty big birds, typically with a 4-5 foot wing span and large bodies. They’re really graceful and agile when they just soar in the air on a thermal updraft or dive after the fish they see in the shallow water. If you look at them standing by their nests they look quite dignified even with those bright turquoise blue feet. The birds can sit on their nests and look like they’re doing a serious job. But if we wait a minute or two and watch one of them land, you’ll get a totally different impression of them. Somehow or other the boobie engineers got the aerodynamics wrong for landing on the ground.”
Inge looked up at the sky to the east. “Here comes one now. Just watch and you’ll see what Dieter was talking about. The fun part is that the bird seems to know it has a few design flaws as well as we do. If you look at him he seems to know he’s in danger. He’s got his wings spread out as wide as he can and as rigid as he can make them, his body is literally leaning backwards, his rump is all the way down, and his tail feathers are all flared out. The body language is shouting SLOW DOWN. When I look at his feet I can imagine him trying to stamp on an imaginary brake pedal, with his webbed feet looking like the ailerons on an airplane extending to get more air resistance to slow him down just a little bit more. If I look at his eyes I see stark terror mixed with fatalism.”
I’d describe the boobie’s landing as a controlled crash. I saw a few more landings of these large, clumsy, beautiful, funny looking birds as we walked along, and they looked exactly the same each time.
The tourist group noticeably relaxed and continued walking. We saw a lot more of the blue-footed boobies, in and under the trees. Juana pointed out a mini-forest of the silver-gray Palo Santo trees. She also identified lots of different kinds of lizards scooting by whose names I quickly forgot. The trail opened up onto another large beach, this time without any seals on it. There were several large bunches of birds flying over the shallow ocean and diving for fish.
“What kind of birds are those?” asked Juana, the guide.
“The huge clumsy looking ones are Frigate birds, aren’t they?” suggested Dieter Schultz. The guide nodded yes.
Gretchen Kaufman suggested the smaller, more graceful birds might be some kind of petrel.
“Good guess, but no. Does anyone else have a guess?”
A pattern was emerging with regard to which of us had the expertise in bird recognition as Inge Schultz asked, “How about swallow-tailed gulls?”
The guide nodded. “North Seymour is most famous for its sea lions, marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies, frigates, and swallow-tailed gulls, so we’ve seen all of the major species I’d hoped to show you this afternoon. The boobies and frigates fish for their food, but they use very different techniques. The boobies hunt in pairs and do all of the hard work diving for fish. They have very good eyesight and can see the fish if the water is shallow, even from high in the air. Boobies can reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour by the time they hit the water. They look like bombs going in, then swim peacefully back to the surface, usually with a fish in their mouth.
“The frigate birds, which are a lot bigger, hunt as individuals who dive bomb the boobies with fish in their mouths and make them drop the fish, which the frigate birds are quick enough to catch in mid-air before they hit the water. This cycle is repeated over and over until both species have eaten their fill.”
We watched the huge frigates for a while, which were easy to find with their 2.3-meter (8 feet) wingspan. This was mating season and a lot of frigate birds were perched in low bushes watching over chicks or flirting with each other. “Look over there,” Dieter said loudly, pointing at a male frigate bird trying as hard as he could to attract a mate. The male bird had puffed up a scarlet colored pouch on his throat to make a giant red balloon. If all went well a receptive female would accept his offer. We watched for ten minutes or so but the poor male didn’t seem to be having any luck as his gular pouch slowly deflated.
We wandered back to meet the Zodiac at a slower pace, just enjoying the sights and sounds of the island around us. With a lot of help from Juana and the Schultz’s we spotted flocks of pelicans and gulls feeding offshore, boobies without blue feet called Nazca boobies, Galapagos snakes, and several species of marine and land iguanas and lizards.
By the time we got to the beach our group had spread out a good deal. We were somewhere near the middle of the pack. The last couple to catch up to us was the Australians, Emily and Victor Weaver. Emily was looking a little bit shaken up, while Victor was talking to her calmly and reassuringly.
Inga Schultz took a few steps towards the couple. “What took you so long?” she asked.
Emily answered immediately, “Someone tried to kill me back there!”
Victor quickly added, “Ere, ‘ere, luv. Let’s not accuse folks when we didn’t see nothing.”
Emily shushed her husband. “We stopped to look at a couple of nesting blue-footed boobies. We were just standing there beside a steep cliff watching them on the ground in front of us when a big rock fell down right next to me. I think someone pushed it down from the top of the cliff.”
Inga looked at her sympathetically. “Did you see anyone at the top of the cliff just before or just after the rock fell, Emily?”
Emily looked contrite. “No, I didn’t see anyone. But I felt something wrong there, a sinister presence of some sort.”
Victor added in an appeasing tone, “We’re not accusing nobody of nothing here. Emily’s real shook-up. It was likely just an accident.”
Juana took the Weavers aside and talked earnestly to them, too low for us to hear what she was saying. Suzanne looked at me to ask, “What did you make of that scene, Roger?”
“Darned if I know. The island has a lot of loose rocks strewn all over and accidents happen. But everyone from the Santa Cruz and a bunch of the smaller boats was wandering around more or less at random and could have helped a rock to fall near Emily without anyone seeing it happening. I think we should assume it was just an accident, but we should also keep our eyes open just in case.”
The water taxi was waiting for us when we returned to the first beach. We were back on the Sant
a Cruz by 5:30.
Chapter 6.Meeting Charles Darwin
Darwin: Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
At 6 o’clock we sat in the ship’s salon waiting to hear a briefing from our guide about what we’d seen today and would be seeing tomorrow. Eduardo passed by to take his seat, surreptitiously slipping me a slim folded note, which I pocketed. I’d read it later, when we returned to the privacy of our cabin.
The guides presented a slide show with images of the plants, trees, birds, and animals we’d seen today on North Seymour and we could expect to see on tomorrow’s tour of Bartholomew Island, with its different terrain and inhabitants.