I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks

Monday, October 28, 2013

Floreana mockingbird

This is what we were looking for -- the Floreana mockingbird. There are fewer than a hundred of them left, and none on Floreana itself; they're only found on Gardner and one other nearby islet.

We had been sailing slowly around Gardner for about thirty minutes when our naturalist saw it -- a little head poking out from a prickly pear high above us.

But we were very lucky -- the bird flew down from the cactus and made its way down the nearby rocks, so we could all get a good look at it. And of course, many, many pictures.

And compared to some of the other birds we're seeing -- the tropicbirds, the blue-footed boobies -- this is not an especially exotic-looking bird, nothing that anyone would travel thousands of miles to see. But it gave me goose bumps to think that there are so few of them left, on two tiny islands off the coast of South America, and I was lucky enough to see one.





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