Española Island
Hood Island, named by English pirates back in the 1700s, is known today as Española. It is one of the oldest islands of the chain; 3.8 million years has given its animal species more time to evolve in isolation, so this particular environment is home to some endemics of its own.
The mockingbird of Española is one of the four mockingbird species present on the islands, and one of the species that got Darwin’s attention back in 1835 when he visited the archipelago. He collected three of them and was able to see the physical differences between them; he was realized that something strange must be going on in this place, and that species were closely related but not the same – ”there is a difference between the inhabitants of the different islands.”
One of the differences with the marine iguanas of Española is the very attractive green and red coloration the males display during the mating season; mating season in Galápagos is at the beginning of the hot, rainy months of the year, as females walk around looking for a partner, and these attractive boys will exhibit this combination of colors to be seen by the females…
As we walked on the trails that were once Pahoa-hoe lava flows, we had a chance to see the entire breeding cycle of the Nazca boobies: couples courting, couples making a nest, couples preening each other, parents incubating eggs and, finally, parents taking turns to protect brand new chicks from the Galápagos hawks.
The waved albatross, nesting along the inside trail of the island, made us realize how unique this place truly is; these birds reproduce nowhere else but here. The reason is that Punta Suarez has the cliffs and the right wind conditions that help them take off into the sea.
These are a few of the experiences that make the Galápagos an enchanted archipelago; nowhere else do we have the opportunity to witness and feel the power of nature undisturbed.
As we get back on board we realize that these fragile, pristine ecosystems need to be conserved in time, not for us or our future generations, but for their own inhabitants, the animal species that belong here and nowhere else!
