There are three species of boobies in the Galapagos Islands, the Nazca, the red footed, and the blue footed booby. Of these, it’s the blue footed that everyone comes to see. Their feet are actually a sexually selected trait, with both males and females preferring mates with brighter feet. The courtship dance is one of the most comical in the bird world, with mating pairs lifting their feet to display to each other. Unfortunately, mating season had just ended so we didn’t see the dance, but we did see plenty of the blue feet coming in for landings and flying through the air.

If you had to chose one animal to be the face of the Galapagos Islands it would probably be the giant tortoise. This guy was photographed in the highlands of Santa Cruz island. I got down on the ground about six feet or so from the tortoise before it quickly approached to within a foot. It was mating season and my guide told me that the tortoise probably thought I was a female (fooled by the neck of my long lens and the reflection in the glass). I put down the long lens, grabbed my wide angle and got several shots as the tortoise slowly turned its head from one side to the other, skeptically considering the worthiness of my mating potential. Luckily for both of us, it eventually figured out that it would have better luck elsewhere.

On our first day in the Galapagos — on the island of Genovesa — we were treated to this little domestic drama between a mother magnificent frigatebird, her young chick, and a rogue intruder. All was nice and sweet as the mother prepares to transfer a fish from her throat, into that of the chick. The chick had its entire head in the mouth of its mother at one point and eventually emerged with the fish. And that’s when the trouble began.

A male frigatebird (perhaps even the father we were told by our guide) was lurking in the air above. When he saw the fish in the chick’s mouth, he attacked, hoping for an easy meal.

After an intense battle of will, however, the chick emerged victorious and swallowed the fish in the face of the would be thief.

Another highlight of our trip to the Galapagos was running into a huge pod of bottlenose dolphins late one afternoon while traveling from one island to another. There seemed to be a hundred of them, jumping in every direction. Trying to photograph them with a long lens was a bit like playing whack-a-mole. I had to pretty much pick a spot and hope that a dolphin would jump there. This guy was one of my few successful attempts. As you can see, a fairly impressive vertical leap.

The highlight of any trip to the Galapagos Islands is swimming with the sea lions. This guy was one of about four or five of them that played with us for about half an hour off the shores of Isabela island. I’ve been wanting to get my camera under water for a long time and the sea lions and Pacific green sea turtles were the perfect subjects to practice on. Like the marine iguana that I posted yesterday, there are many more of these guys to come.

Just back from Ecuador tonight and in the process of downloading all the new photos. Many to go through, but to get started, here’s a marine iguana from the island of Fernandina. I’d say that based on the amount of photos I took, the marine iguanas were my favorite subject, and Fernandina was my favorite island. Many more of these guys to come. All in all it was a great trip in both the Galapagos Islands and in the cloud forest on the mainland. I’ve avoided the Galapagos Islands in the past because of my apprehension about the group nature of such a trip, the regimented scheduling of island visits and lack of independence. All these things proved to be true, but we worked around the limitations and managed to really enjoy ourselves. Now time for some much needed sleep.