Genovesa Island

What a spectacular day we had today! Genovesa offered us one of the most fascinating opportunities to observe at a very close range an incredible quantity of birds. The island is a very low, flat and isolated island with a huge underwater sunken crater. The perfect combination of tropical marine and land birds and the magnificence of the volcanic landscape provoke the best comments about the exquisiteness of the island from our visitors. Genovesa is for us, the naturalists, the island of the birds. Hundreds of thousands of them are seen flying or perching everywhere. As an example, the island is home to the biggest colony of Red-footed boobies in Galapagos, with an estimated number of 140,000 individuals! In the morning, after a wet landing on a white-coral sand beach, named Darwin Beach, we had a wonderful visit. Frigate birds chasing boobies, elegant swallow-tailed gulls displaying, Galapagos doves, mockingbirds and finches - all gave us their best today. In addition, something really special this season is encountering so many young chicks all over the place. Among all these colorful and attractive birds I spotted one that is not particularly attractive, but very important, the endemic Lava gull. This dark bird has a very long, loud and raucous call that resembles a deep-voiced person's sarcastic cackling laugh, similar in some extent to that of its probable ancestor, the Laughing gull. The Lava gull (Larus fuliginosus) is found only in the Galapagos, where it is widespread though not abundant. In fact, it is considered to be very rare. Until now, it has been difficult to guess the real size of the population of these gulls, and experts think the total number of lava gulls in the whole archipelago is around just 200 pairs! In the photograph of today we can appreciate one of these extremely rare birds. Sometimes the beauty of these birds is eclipsed by their colorful neighbors, and for that the lava gulls are not fully cherished. Personally, I believe that although not outstanding in terms of attractiveness or quantity, they are however very important in terms of quality. Today with this photograph of the Lava gull I just wanted to render a small tribute to an often-underestimated bird and to its particular gracefulness and simplicity.