Welcome to a world where fear is unknown
Observing the birds of the Galapagos is a strange but rewarding task, says Hilary Bradt
It is the essence of the Galapagos Islands – which as part of Ecuador was one of the final outposts to be released from the UK’s red list last month – and the most memorable aspect of an always memorable visit. No creature there shows any fear of humans. Sea lions play tag underwater, putting whiskery faces up to snorkelling masks. Blue-footed boobies jab at visitors’ legs; they still haven’t learnt not to nest by the trail. Albatrosses show off their courting dance, ignoring their human audience and marine iguanas stare out to sea, their only sign of life a regular spurt of salt water from their nostrils.
So imagine spending a year on the Enchanted Islands. Not on the populated ones such as Santa Cruz and Isabela, but on two raw, barren uninhabited islands, 300 miles apart. Bryan Nelson, already the world authority on gannets, needed to complete his study of the Sulidae by spending time with the other members of this family, the boobies. Two species, the red-footed and Nazca boobies, live on Tower (Genovesa) and the well-known blue-footed booby on Hood (Española), along with the waved albatross and a noisy bevy of sea lions bang in the middle of the campsite occupied by Nelson and his wife, June. Admittedly the sea lions got there first.
Bryan’s book Galapagos: Islands of Birds inspired me to make my first visit to the archipelago in 1973, and I have wanted to reprint it ever since. Bryan died in 2015 but I located June, and for the past year she has been adding her recollections of that extraordinary year to Bryan’s edited text, retaining his bird observations but focusing on the challenges of desert island living.
After a hot and tiring day weighing boobies, it was June’s responsibility to do a spot of mending. A disintegrating sweater had to be saved by picking apart a pair of socks and using the wool to create new sleeves. “The resulting sleeves were so tight that Bryan could barely lift his arms,” June recalls.
Food was either boring, often sardines or corned beef hash (curried, it was almost edible), or frankly disgusting: beetle-infested spaghetti, which tasted of sacking. But none of this really mattered when the birds you were studying were so unmoved by your presence that they were literally unmoved. To see if the red-foots had eggs, Bryan simply felt underneath the sitting birds.
Shortly after the couple’s arrival at Tower, a small black Darwin’s finch made his acquaintance, and within days had convinced them that a peck on a finger meant it was imperative to give him an almond, and a gentle peck on the nose was enough to get June reluctantly out of her sleeping bag at dawn.
The mockingbirds were another story. No dainty request for almonds from them – they would eat absolutely anything. And drink anything. And steal anything. “They drank vinegar as though it were nectar and would sell their souls for fat. If we turned our backs on the breakfast table, they jumped up and gobbled the butter. Often a tug at the hand alerted us to 40 thieves stealing butter from our bread.”
Desperation for liquid was almost the undoing of one individual who fell head first into a jar of beetroot vinegar. It was rescued, warmed next to June’s body and was easily recognisable thereafter by its pink stuck-together feathers showing beetroot-coloured skin. The mockingbirds’ enthusiasm for June’s baking days was not welcome. “From the corner of my eye I notice three drinking thirstily from my meagre pastry water. Others are piling on to the bowl. By now I’m leaping up and down, yelling, fatty, floury hands windmilling.”
June has chosen to help save the Floreana mockingbird ( just 300 are left in the world) by fundraising a limited-edition of her book with a percentage given to conservation. That’s forgiveness for you.
‘Often a tug at the hand alerted us to 40 thieves stealing butter from our bread’