You are browsing the archives of Galapagos.

I am not an ornithologist but this albino finch got my attention.  I suspect that it is an incomplete albino since there is some pigmentation near the face, beak, and feet.  I suspect that this finch belongs to the Woodpecker family from the shape of the beak but I welcome any other comments. I first [...]

The most common owls in the world are also in the Galapagos Islands and are considered subspecies that only occur in Galapagos, so one could almost say they are endemic subspecies. The Barn Owl subspecies is the Tyto alba punctatissima and can be found on Isabela, Santa Cruz, Fernandida, Santiago, San Cristobal, Pinta, and maybe [...]

If you know only a little bit about Charles Darwin, you know that he figured out Evolution via his study of the finches (and other birds) of the Galapagos. If you know a bit more than that about Darwin, you know that he totally messed up his collection of birds from the Galapagos Islands, and [...]

Birdwatching and visiting the Enchanted Islands is a dream that can be materialized by many more people than one would guess. The fact is that the entire tourism industry benefiting from Darwin’s discoveries want you to believe that you must spend a small fortune to be able to realize your dream. In fact this is [...]

The order Suliformes holds a lot of special birds from anhingas and darters to cormorants and shags as well as frigatebirds, pelicans, and tropicbirds. But the sleekest of the sulids may be found in the family Sulidae. Gannets and boobies are pulchritudinous plunge divers possessed of long wings, conical bills, and totipalmate (all four toes are webbed), [...]

Like many people the world over I’ve wanted to visit the Galapagos Islands ever since I knew they existed.  Whether this desire is because of the influence of the islands on Darwin and his theory of evolution, the numerous documentaries about them, the fact that Kurt Vonnegut based a novel there, their distance from everything [...]

A good friend of mine, who I’ll call Carmine Sandiego because I never know where in the world he is, has no interest whatsoever in birds. Nonetheless, he respects my own obvious enthusiasm to the extent that he tries to get me good avian photos from his travels. A batch from a recent trip to [...]