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 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…

Galapagos–Here’s looking at YOU

This one of my FAVORITE photos I took in the Galapagos. It’s of a Pelican resting. They often tuck their beaks under their feathers. I went around behind him (often getting a sneaker wave over my backside!) and sat on the ground so I could get a really low shot…Then he opened his eyes and stared straight at me!

CLICK!

Galapagos Dolphins

So we got a shipwide wakeup call at 4:25am. The captain had spotted over a 1000 dolphin pod a mile away. It was the most miraculous thing I saw the whole trip. Thousands of dolphins in a long line in front of our boat all jumping 15ft in the air!

Unfortunately because of the humidity each morning I usually took my camera outside on deck for 45 minute or more so that it wouldn’t fog up. Needless to say I was fast asleep when the all on deck call occurred. I grabbed my camera and went upstairs only to be very frustrated along with every other photographer that my lens would not unfog. So these are taken about 25 minutes later when they were all jumped out, and very scattered in small pods again. But the light was very beautiful.