Day 6 - Wednesday, March 15

Genovesa: Prince Philip's Steps and Bahia Darwin

Today we visited Genovesa (Tower Island), a collapsed volcano in the northeast part of the Galapagos, less than half a degree north of the equator. The island contains one of the largest and most diverse bird populations in the Galapagos. Our ship was able to sail right into the large breached caldera of the volcano and anchor right at the foot of the steep crater walls.

In the morning, we made a dry landing near the eastern tip of Darwin Bay. We got off the panga at the base of a steep rock staircase named Prince Philip’s Steps, in honor of His Majesty’s royal visit in the 1960’s. The climb is very steep and just a bit tricky in spite of the handrail recently constructed by the park service.

It was worth every slippery step! The stairs lead to an open area where we were surrounded by nesting masked boobies and great frigate birds.

A few yards down the trail, we entered a ‘forest’ of dwarf palo santo trees, in which a colony of red-footed boobies was posing for pictures.

The red-footed booby is the smallest of the Galapagos boobies, about 2.5 feet long with a wingspan of about 4.5 feet. Most adults are brown, but about 5% are white – this is just a different color phase and not a new species; all of them are readily identified by their red feet and blue bills.

This is the most numerous of the Galapagos boobies, but also the least frequently seen because it is found only on the more outlying islands, such as Genovesa, where there are an estimated 140,000 birds in the colony. It feeds far out to sea, avoiding competition with the blue-footed booby, which feeds close to shore, and the masked booby, which feeds in between the other two. This booby builds crude nests in trees, unlike the scrapes on the ground of the other two species.

The woods gave way to an open lava field near the western coast, where we saw more masked boobies and thousands of storm petrels at the cliff’s edge, where they nest in crevices.

In the lava field along the cliff, we saw lava cactus, the first plant to take hold on lava, and spotted a short-eared owl, lurking in search of its next fill-up of petrel.

After our hike, we headed back to Prince Philip's Steps, for one last photo of a sleeping sea lion before we went back to the ship for another delicious snack...

followed by snorkeling or kayaking along the crater walls.

Lunch was followed by a long siesta to avoid the heat of the day.










By 4:00 p.m., we were back in the pangas for a wet landing on a coral beach at on the southern end of Darwin’s Bay.











The trail began right by the beach, where there were several swallow-tailed gulls nesting along the beginning of the trail.










As we walked away from the beach, we saw lots of prickly pear cactus and mangroves as the trail passed into large nesting areas of great frigate birds, red-footed boobies and masked boobies.

Frigate birds are big and black, with a wingspan of almost 8 feet. They are outstanding fliers and have the largest wingspan to weight ratio of any bird on the planet. The male great frigate bird has a metallic-purplish sheen to its black plumage; the female is white underneath and has a reddish eye-ring.

The frigate bird’s courtship display is quite spectacular. It is the females who do the conspicuous searching out and selecting of males; they take to the air above the rookery to look over the males, who cluster in groups on the trees. Whenever a female circles low overhead, the males react with a great display of inflating the scarlet red pouches hanging under their necks. It takes about 20 minutes to fully inflate the pouch to about the size of a football. The male sits in a tree and displays the pouch skyward to attract passing females; he also vibrates his wings back and forth and makes clicking and drumming noises.

Along the edge of a forest of salt brush, we found nesting red-footed boobies, including several in 'white phase.'

The trail continued past a beautiful tide pool area; in fact, we waded a long distance, getting quite close to the nesting birds. Heading back to the beach, we saw swallowtail gulls, a lava gull, a pair of ruddy turnstones, and a beatiful yellow warbler.

Sea lions? But of course ...
they're everywhere.

As the shadows grew long at day's end, everyone wandered back to the beach landing site - wet, tired and wondering what wonders tomorrow will bring.