Ferdandina Island

One of my favorite places was Punta Espinosa on Fernandina Island. You cannot even imagine the number of sea iguanas that are here. They go into the water to feed in the morning and then come out to the lava rock to warm up and desalinate. This video can hopefully show what an awesome display this is. There are hundreds of these iguanas just sitting there all over each other and every few seconds, you would hear another one 'spitting'. You had to be careful not to stand right in front of them, but they would let you if you wanted. In the Galapagos are the only marine iguanas on earth. The thing that makes these guys special is this ability to desalinate after being in the sea.




One of the other amazing creatures we were able to watch here was the flightless cormorant. This bird has over time by evolution gotten rid of the ability to fly. You can see the tiny wings here that they still dry out, but not to use them for flying. The first ones we saw were a couple. We saw the male swim into the ocean, dive under and come back up with nest material for his female. He walked up to her, placed it down and she looked at it and made some noises. He then went back intot he water to get another piece for the nest. I guess this one made her happy, because she started making more noises and sort of moved into a stance. He mounted her and we saw them mating - it was amazing, even though it only lasted about 3 seconds! After that, they both made noises and just stood there.

We happened upon another couple who were further along in their mating cycle. The mother was sitting on the nest with 3 eggs in it, 2 of which had hatched. The male still brought her pieces for the nest (they use their excrements along with this sea weed to make the nests). While we watched her from only feet away, we saw the baby bird moving his head up and crying for quite a while and then she put his mouth in hers and fed him. It was so incredible to watch! These are the types of things that you would only expect to see up close on the Discovery Channel, but here we were! We didn't catch a video of the mating or feeding, but Scott got a good one of the male bringing next material to the mother.



And of course our favorite old friend, who is also desalinating sortof here. He picks up a bunch in his mouth and keeps the food, but gets rid of the water like this.