Today we spent our day on Genovesa Island which is located on the north-eastern edge of Galapagos. This morning we got to Darwin’s Bay beach and this is the best place to see red footed boobies in their breeding grounds. We walked the trail along the coast where we found frigate birds, Galapagos sea lions, and a large colony of swallow tailed gulls. We had great sunny weather and warm water, so at the end of our walk we went snorkeling along the cliffs of the protected bay where we admired the colors of the fish and marine invertebrates on the rocks underwater.
This afternoon we landed again, this time on a place known as Prince Phillip’s Steps. There we found one of the largest colonies of Nazca boobies of the archipelago. We saw several couples starting to build their nests, others had small new born chicks and we also found several juveniles that are now independent of their parents. As we explored a bit more along the rusty red lava flow we found three short-eared owls hiding in small crevices and one of them using the yellow dry grass to camouflage itself. We took lots of pictures of all of these birds and also the landscape with great light. After a wonderful walk we returned aboard and celebrated Halloween with great costumes and had a lot of fun.
