Isla Fernandina:
The biggest marine iguanas of them all. We found this single iguana out in the open when we first came ashore, and everyone was crowding around, taking multiple pictures of him...then, further down the trail, we discovered a colony of about 200 iguanas. (This photo was taken in black and white.)

Don't ask me what those four were doing.

Our first viewing of marine iguanas en masse. They lie lumped together like this to conserve body heat. These are some of the biggest species of marine iguana (the world's only aquatic lizard), and they have a real "sea monster" look to them, especially when they're swimming by the shore, with just that blunt, spiny head showing. Another interesting quirk is that since they don't have any other way of dispelling the saltwater they intake, they vigorously snort it out through their nostrils.

A whale's bones. Apparently, a scientist had found the bones on the beach, took them, made notes on them, then put them back on the beach, thoughtfully arranging them in the way they would have been arranged in the living animal.

A male lava lizard - M. albemarlensis. Check out his dorsal fringe.

A young brown pelican.

A sally lightfoot crab. These critters were crawling all over the shorelines. The younger crabs are darker, so they blend in with the lava better and avoid getting found and eaten by predators.

One of my favorites, the flightless cormorant. With no predators, these birds had no reason to fly, so eventually, their wings dwindled to their current size. While their wings were weakening, though, their legs were becoming stronger, enabling them to swim faster and dive deeper for food.

Aren't those eyes incredible? (These two are females.)

These two were assembling a nest. Here, the male is helping the female position a branch.

This male is just returning from the sea with a clump of seaweed...

...which he presents to his mate. This photo isn't in focus, but it's the only one we got of this moment.

Lava lizards climb on everything.

A closeup of pahoehoe lava. "Pahoehoe" is a Hawai'ian name meaning "ropy", and the Hawai'ian words for different types of lava have become the accepted names for lava worldwide. The other common type of lava is the chunky, jagged A'a, which is Hawai'ian for "hurt" -- because it hurts if you try to walk on it with bare feet. A lot.

Lava cactus - an endemic plant.

The shore of Fernandina, and probably a grazing spot for the marine iguanas.

A male yellow warbler. An endemic subspecies of Galapagos (meaning, it hasn't evolved enough to be recognized as a distinct species). At first, I thought that the red cap on its head (which our yellow warblers at home don't have) was something that had developed in the subspecies. Later, however, I noticed a species of warbler in my Birds of Ecuador book that looked *exactly* like the Galapagos yellow warbler. Not only that, but when it came to habitat, it was more like the Galapagos yellow warbler than the "original" yellow warbler. And this was called the mangrove warbler...which also had the same species name as the Galapagos yellow warbler had. I'm still trying to figure out what the heck is going on here.

A green sea turtle's head. These turtles are incredibly numerous in Galapagos.

A hermit crab on the lava.

Isla Isabela:
A dark-billed cuckoo sitting in a poison apple tree (they really are poisonous; don't get its juices on you or sit under it while it's raining). These birds are said to be shy and reclusive, but this one seemed pretty bold.

Another endemic, the Galapagos flycatcher.

A baby giant tortoise. You don't often see giant tortoises along the regular trails, so this was a welcome surprise. This one was very young (for a giant tortoise, which can live to be over 150 years old), and only the size of a basketball...and very shy.

A land iguana in front of its burrow.

A green sea turtle. This and the following five photos were taken from a small inflatable raft we rode on to get closer to the unaccessable shores.

Another striated heron in a mangrove.

Galapagos penguin. The second smallest species of penguin in the world, as well as the only tropical penguin, and the only one to breed north of the equator. We saw some of them perched on rocky cliffs and swimming in the water.

A penguin and a blooby.

Some sea lion pups playing in the water near us. Sea lions were everywhere, and the usually territorial and dangerous males were few and far between, since it was after their breeding season.

This penguin was calling when we photographed him. They make a sound like an asthmatic lamb, sort of a "BAAAAA-*wheeze*-AAAAAAH!" noise.

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