Galapagos: Tower Island

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Tower Island had a wealth of wildlife. We saw two different varieties of booby – the gallery below shows masked boobies nesting. You could get amazingly close, as you can see. One has both an egg and a chick, another has a broken egg and a dead chick.

Masked booby, egg and chick
Masked booby and eggs
Masked boobies
Masked booby, broken egg and dead chick

These are the red-footed boobies – cute, but my favourites are still the blue-footed boobies in the previous post.

Red-footed boobies
Red-footed booby

Swallow-tailed gulls also had chicks –

Swallow-tailed gull
Swallow-tailed gull chick

– as did the frigatebirds. The black bird here is a deflated male – see the previous post for shots of that magnificent red pouch inflated.

Male frigatebird deflated
Frigatebird chick

This is a lava heron and a yellow-crowned night heron:

Lava heron
Yellow-crowned night heron

Marine iguanas were everywhere!

Marine iguanas
Marine iguanas

And there were people, of course there were people, but not too many. The young lady with the cap is our guide, Cathy. Tourism to Galapagos is strictly controlled and you can’t land on any of the islands without a guide. As for that T-shirt – I still have it, but it’s never seen outside the house.

Cathy, our guide
Galapagos T-shirt
All aboard!

Final Galapagos post next Thursday!

Ecuador

31 Comments »

  1. Fantastic photos. I visited the Galapagos a couple of years ago and it is interesting to see your posts from an earlier time. Sadly a lot of development has happened since you were there though.

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