A wild Galapagos adventure
In this extract from a reissued classic about studying birds on the Galapagos Islands with her late husband Bryan, June Nelson recalls dwindling food supplies and a royal visit
From our arrival on the Galapagos island of Tower, on 27 December 1963, the trusting neighbours viewed us as objects of curiosity. Before we had hammered in a guy rope, doves pottered in our tent. Mockingbirds ran from the hinterland to share our lunch.
A small black finch, later named Poppet, inspected our boxes of food. To capture and mark our first booby we wandered a few yards from the tent, barefoot, in shorts and sun hats, merely lifted the ‘red-foot’ from its bushy nest, clamped on the rings, and replaced the mildly surprised bird.
A few months earlier, on the Bass Rock in Scotland’s Firth of Forth, to ring a northern relative of the boobies – the gannet – we had donned stout boots against the mud, thick trousers and jackets against battling beaks and clutching claws, slithered slowly on our bottoms over stinking ancient fish remains, warded off the assaults of irate neighbours and spent several breathless moments trying to manoeuvre a noose at the end of a long pole in a brisk wind over the head of a wildly jabbing gannet.
But this whole adventure began with our wedding on the last day of December 1960 and, a few weeks later, Bryan’s departure for the Bass. His first job was to help the head lighthouse keeper, George, assemble our 14x8ft garden shed in the remains of St Baldred’s Chapel. Once a thick wire hawser secured the roof, I joined him.
For three years, with the gannets nesting from February to November, we mostly worked on the behaviour and ecology of the gannet. Food arrived fortnightly, and we carried drinking water up from the lighthouse, brought washing water down from a well, and washed clothes and ourselves in an algaegreen hole beside our hut.
Getting set for take-off to the Galapagos, 5,000 miles away, began by preparing the containers for our luggage. It took two lighthouse keepers and Bryan two weeks to turn a pile of cheap planks into nine large chests plus one gigantic one, each with metal corners fashioned from Tate & Lyle syrup tins. The contents of these chests symbolised our selfcontained life: notebooks, cameras, film, clothes, tools, tents, cooking and eating equipment, materials for a solar still (a device to distill fresh water from seawater), tinned and dried food with gaps for 60lb of butter, 70lb of margarine and lard, 20lb of bacon – all from Selfridges. A year later the food supply was almost gone or inedible. Food was becoming grim; stocks of all tins were running out and we had eaten the last potatoes.
By this time our flour had around 50 maggots or beetles per pound. Sieving with a spoon squashed the maggots and blocked the sieve; I had to use gentle fingers. Dried beans had three or four beetles per bean which left no bean. In spaghetti a black shadow meant beetle, a grey one maggot. It took a long time, breaking out each shadow, to make a meal. Both macaroni and rice had beetles – and tasted of sacking.
Usually, it was much too miserable to go without clothes, and long days passed without swimming. The evenings were too cold for dancing to Radio Belize (although we did enjoy Handel’s ‘Messiah’ one evening). In mid-august, for the first time, I admitted to wishing that we were going home. Six weeks later we agreed that were we given the choice whether or not to start this enterprise
Bryan looked like a half-starved castaway, as he pretty nearly was one
all over again, we would decline. That attitude shows just how low we had sunk.
By October it slowly dawned on us that we would be off to Peru next month, to study the Peruvian booby on the ‘guano islands’. Our time on the Galapagos was galloping to an end. After a year of so many highs and lows, we had ambivalent feelings about departure – relief coupled with regret. And then came the splendiferous finale to our stay.
A less strict regard for the truth might allow me to describe how, early one morning, a trim motor vessel slid snugly round the tip of Punta Suarez. A smartly lowered dinghy manned by immaculate sailors surged ashore. Hastily donning clothes, we went to meet it, when who should step ashore but Prince Philip. This came within an ace of happening – but fortunately Roger Perry, the brand-new director of the Charles Darwin Research Station, had visited Hood some five weeks earlier and given us the news of this royal visit.
How to make our tattered selves presentable? Bryan had no option. The patched shorts streaked with seabird vomit, a stinking mix of oil and decaying fish, a thin sweater with reknitted tight sleeves, and bare feet would have to do. It didn’t matter in the slightest, that he looked like a halfstarved castaway, because he pretty nearly was one.
But what could I wear? I scrabbled in the bottom of one of our chests and, by some magic, surfaced with smart green ski pants, an entire black sweater and real footwear. Attire settled, it remained only to remove the inhospitable sea lion barricade and await the royal arrival.
At exactly 8am, as scheduled, the Britannia slid round Punta Suarez and the little Beagle, with Karl’s brother Fritz at the helm, hastened in from the north after a rough journey from the other side of the Equator. With the Britannia still underway a rubber dinghy took to the water and circled the yacht. This was an unofficial visit to see and photograph the wildlife of the Galapagos, which was perhaps why we were included in the itinerary – though I suspect that the albatrosses and blue-footed boobies had the edge on us. And it was a momentous visit, the first time a member of the British royal family had set foot in the Galapagos, islands whose English names commemorate the Stuart line.
The late Duke of Edinburgh was justly admired for his realistic attitudes and genuine charm. Upon arrival, he quickly dispelled any awkwardness we may have felt about our unexpected looks. Indeed, my smart but sweaty garb obviously impressed since he remarks in his Foreword that when we first met on the beach June appeared ‘as neat and tidy as the day she left civilisation’. With Prince Philip as interested as anyone, we spent four hours watching albatrosses, boobies and tropicbirds, and taking photographs under a grilling sun. The albatrosses even came out from the shade and performed their courtship dance as a Royal Command Performance. Normally they are sunk in lethargy at that time of day and loath to start even the tiniest ecstatic ritual. But Prince Philip got the works, including whoops, grunts, rattles and clunks and mad laughter.
Extracted from Galapagos Crusoes: A Year Alone with the Birds by Bryan and June Nelson (published by Bradt Guides, £11.99)