Isla Santa Fe:
A warbler finch. Another of Darwin's finches, which Darwin thought was just a dull little warbler until years after his voyage to the Galapagos, when famed ornithologist John Gould informed him that it wasn't a warbler, but a finch that had a warblerlike beak. Since Galapagos had no small, insect-eating birds when the ancestral finches arrived, over millions of years, one strain of the finches eventually adapted to fill that niche. I don't know how the warbler finches are doing now that a real warbler has arrived, though.

A Santa Fe land iguana. These guys are like the other land iguanas, but much paler.

Some fine examples of the native cacti (which have trunks like trees).

Interesting "spine-do" on this iguana.

Another "awwwwww" moment between two sea lions.

This sea lion pup found a stick on the beach and started playing with it. He found flail his head around with the stick in his mouth, drop it, pick it up and flail his head again. Very easily amused, these pups. I saw one having similar fun with a feather, swimming around in a shallow bay with it.

San Cristobal:
Kicker Rock, so called because the rock on the right looks like a foot.

A brown pelican taking off...

...and off.

The beach we landed at.

A ghost crab. These crabs are as funny as they look. They are some of the most timid animals in the world. They will sit by their burrows, and at the slightest movement, they disappear down their burrows with incredible speed. The only way to get a good look at one is to get between it and its burrow.

While we were circumnavigating Kicker Rock, some frigate birds were following us, circling like vultures. We could see them clearly from the top of the boat. Then suddenly, they seemed to vanish, and no one knew where they'd gone until we looked up at the rigging above us...

The males' pouches shrivel up after the breeding season.

South Plaza:
A pair of swallow-tailed gulls and their unfledged chick. This chick wanted food, so it was squeaking constantly at its parents, who ignored the chick's pleas. (since swallow-tailed gulls hunt at night and this picture was taken in the morning, that chick probably had to wait a long time before it was fed.)

A white-tailed tropicbird. These birds move very fast, and rarely land, so we were lucky to get shots as good as these. Those long tailfeathers can be a burden for them in more ways than one: frigatebirds grab those feathers and won't let go until the tropicbird disgorges whatever food it might have eaten recently, which the frigatebird eats.

Another shot of the tropicbird.

A land iguana's profile. The land iguanas on South Plaza were somewhat darker than they were on the other islands...and we actually saw a land iguana/marine iguana hybrid on this island, which looked like the land iguana, only darker with pale stripes.

A young swallow-tailed gull. These birds are also the only gulls in the world to have white chicks (which makes them easier to see at night).

A dead iguana, positioned in such a way that you'd think someone posed him like this. With no regular scavengers on all the islands, you see a lot of dead animals lying around.

I told you lava lizards climb on everything.

There were sea lions crowding the landing site when we arrived on South Plaza, and there were sea lions there when we had to leave...so one of our guides had to shoo them away.

A frigging frigatebird.

More frigates on the rigging.

Isla Bartolome:
Remember that scene in "Master and Commander on the Far Side of the World", where that French ship appears in that bay? This is where it happened. (By the way, in the book that the film is based on, that wasn't a French ship -- it was an American ship.)

Santa Cruz (again):
A pretty mangrove lagoon we took the dinghies through.

A school of golden cownosed rays. We saw lots of rays in these lagoons, mostly goldens, but also a few spotted eagle rays (no good pictures of those).

A spiffy great blue heron, looking for something to spear.

A brown noddy: a small but elegant little seabird. Sometimes groups of three or four will fly near a brown pelican as it dives, and when the pelican surfaces with its catch, the noddies try to perch on its head and wait for some small fish to leak out of the pelican's beak. I was witness to this activity. Yes, it's funny.

The grand finale: A blue-footed booby feeding frenzy! These birds came out of nowhere and began plunging into the water, dozens at a time. They would bob on the water for a moment, then fly off and go diving elsewhere.

More boobies diving.

Underwater pictures taken at various times during the Galapagos half of the trip:
A sea lion pup swimming.

This is how close some of the sea lions got to the divers.

I think this is a bluechin parrotfish, from above.

An approaching pufferfish, with its typical intelligent, perceptive expression.

A school of yellowtail surgeonfish.

Yellow-tailed damselfish.

<--Galapagos (Part 5)
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