Sunday bird blogging

 

I'm in the mood for some bright colors today and the bill and eye ring of this oystercatcher on San Cristobal in the Galapagos from 2013 makes me smile.

If travel ever becomes a possibility, if getting on a plane or a ship is ever reasonably safe again, the Galapagos would be top of the list of places I'd love to revisit.

Sunday bird blogging

I think we'd all agree that 2020 has been a nonstop roller coaster and not the fun kind, where you scream and clutch the safety bar and immediately get in line again as soon as the ride is over. No, this year has been more like puking cotton candy and lemonade all over your best shirt then getting stuck on the tracks for an hour while a couple of Stephen King carnival clowns with pointed teeth wait for you down below.

So here's an appropriately strange creature for the times we're in -- a juvenile frigatebird on Genovesa, in the Galapagos, from 2013.

Sunday bird blogging

I'm sorting and cleaning out old pictures and backing things up to Dropbox, and here's one that never got processed at the time: a juvenile frigate bird in the Galapagos, looking quite haughty under more fluff than a week's worth of local newscasts.

Why am I posting pictures from 2013 when there's a park a mile away that's currently hosting thousands of migrating birds? Because apparently none of them are in a mood to be photographed, that's why. I went there early this morning, and even though many of my favorite spots are inaccessible due to maintenance work, there were still hundreds of birds around, every single one of them hiding behind leaves or sitting in the shadows. It was a lovely walk but I might as well not have bothered with the camera, as I deleted every single picture once I got home.

Sunday bird blogging

I had planned to go up to the park this morning and take pictures after the storm. Had planned, that is, back on Friday when the predicted accumulation was 5-8 inches.

But wading through the more than two feet of snow we actually got is not an attractive idea this morning. The streets are mostly plowed, but every corner has shoulder-high drifts to negotiate, and all things considered, I'd rather stay home.

So here's a flashback to warmer days -- a mockingbird from Punta Suarez in the Galapagos.

Sunday bird blogging

Blue-footed boobies in the Galapagos, of course -- this may be the most unmistakable bird on the planet.

This isn't something I dug out of my own extensive collection of boobie-graphs, though -- this is actually a shot I took Friday of the postcard I left in Post Office Bay almost two years ago, which was finally delivered to my friend Jayne's apartment building last week.

It was somehow more exciting to see this old message finally arrive, transported entirely by the goodwill of strangers, than any snail mail I've received in -- well, maybe ever.

Sunday bird blogging

In memory of warmer climes (and making up for this) here's a Nazca booby against a perfect blue sky in the Galapagos.

Sunday bird blogging

The darkest evening of the year

Winter solstice this evening, so the long crawl back to daylight has started, even though I know we still have months of nasty weather to look forward to.

It's been overcast and gloomy every weekend so I haven't been taking many pictures, and there's rarely been sufficient light for bird photographs. So here's yet another Galapagos souvenir, a juvenile swallowtail gull on Genovesa.

Sunday bird blogging

Brrr.

Out of nowhere, the beautiful fall weather gave way to bone-chilling cold. And my body clock is completely turned around because I had to get up in the middle of the night and spend two hours testing critical systems after an upgrade. And I just spilled my pasta dinner all over my duvet. Disgruntled is a very mild term for how I'm feeling.

So here's a souvenir from one of the perfect moments of my life: sitting on the beach at Gardner Bay in the Galapagos, listening to the waves and the sea lions and watching finches hop around the sand, completely unconcerned with my presence once they figured out I wasn't something to eat.

Sunday bird blogging

Red white and blue birds for the holiday weekend.

These are the two morphs, or variants, of the red-footed booby, the common brown and the rarer white. The white booby makes an appropriate Fourth of July bird, even if it's from Ecuador.

Sunday bird blogging

The swallowtail gull chick on Genovesa in the Galapagos.

My cold slammed into town like yet another nor'easter, and has mostly departed, but I'm still a little shaky, a little shivery, with that odd sense of having skin so tender even the air feels sore.

Rarely do I find a photo that so perfectly expresses how I feel. Except that right now I'm pretty sure the baby bird could kick my ass.

Sunday bird blogging

Indulging my dreams of warmer weather: blue sky, blue water, and shearwaters flying low in the Galapagos.

Sunday non-bird blogging

Reptile Blogging!

Snow yesterday, snow tomorrow, and a toasty 17 degrees under sunny skies this morning -- this blissed out iguana basking in the sun looks very good to me.

Sunday bird blogging

As bird photographs go, not my best, but for some reason this past week has me thinking of penguins. 

Even equatorial penguins, so here are three of them swimming in the Galapagos.

Sunday bird blogging

One more juvenile frigatebird for the road, and we'll look for some American birds next week.

Sunday bird blogging

Some more finchiness: three species on Santa Cruz island.

You can't see the cactus finch to the right as clearly, but in the two pictures above it's easy to see how closely these birds are related; the feathers and the eyes are almost identical. It really is just those very prominent beaks that distinguish them.

Sunday bird blogging

A warbler finch on Espanola.

There's one species of flycatcher in the Galapagos, and that's what I assumed this was at first -- it looks a little like a least flycatcher -- but that short stubby tail means it's one of Darwin's finches.

Unlike the mockingbirds, where each species is limited to a particular island, the finches occupy particular ecological niches, and the beaks of the various species and subspecies allow them to live side by side without competing for food. A finch with a bigger beak eats the cactus fruit, for example, while a finch with a smaller beak eats the base of the cactus plant. And those small pointed warbler finch beaks are perfect for catching insects, which is what this bird was focused on when I saw it.

Sunday bird blogging

This is a sanderling, a common shore bird just about anywhere in the world. This particular bird was enjoying the unique ambience of San Cristobal in the Galapagos.

Saturday reflections

It will be several days before regular blogging resumes, while I try to catch up with the backlog of Galapagos and Panama entries.

In the meantime, here's a hybrid: Saturday reflections, Galapagos style. I love the way the wet coat of this sea lion at Punta Suarez reflects the sky and the black lava rocks on Espanola.

Caldera

The rim of the caldera that forms Darwin Bay on Genovesa, and a closeup of the rocks.

Shark!

We've seen many small reef sharks this week, but this Galapagos shark off the side of the ship this afternoon was at least eight feet long.