Santa Cruz
The continuing cloud cover over Santa Cruz Island provided us today with quite an agreeable climate. Not only were we able to explore the cloud forest habitat of the pit craters at a comfortable temperature, but the giant tortoises we were planning to see were extremely active (well, in a tortoise sense of the word!), due to the lack of heat. On hot days it’s essential for them to take siestas.
At Butterfly ranch, we spotted one of the tortoises wallowing in a mist pool: a pool of fresh water accumulated from the constant ‘garua’ (or ‘torrential fog’ as one person quoted) that’s been in plentiful supply this season. Apart from wallowing, de-ticking and cooling in the soothing water, the giant tortoise also finds one of it’s favorite foods there: the water fern. Azolla microphylla as it is known, is a very small fern that floats on the top of these pond surfaces.
In the photo we can see a magnified image of a water droplet sitting on the fern. This gives us an idea of how small the plant is (each of those tiny leaves are less than 1mm across). It spreads quite quickly in the right, cool, conditions, to cover the entire pond, giving it a mottled red and green appearance. Apart from being extremely delicious for the tortoises, it is absolutely beautiful for us too.Highlights of our day included a good view of the woodpecker finch in action and several sightings of the vermilion flycatcher.
The continuing cloud cover over Santa Cruz Island provided us today with quite an agreeable climate. Not only were we able to explore the cloud forest habitat of the pit craters at a comfortable temperature, but the giant tortoises we were planning to see were extremely active (well, in a tortoise sense of the word!), due to the lack of heat. On hot days it’s essential for them to take siestas.
At Butterfly ranch, we spotted one of the tortoises wallowing in a mist pool: a pool of fresh water accumulated from the constant ‘garua’ (or ‘torrential fog’ as one person quoted) that’s been in plentiful supply this season. Apart from wallowing, de-ticking and cooling in the soothing water, the giant tortoise also finds one of it’s favorite foods there: the water fern. Azolla microphylla as it is known, is a very small fern that floats on the top of these pond surfaces.
In the photo we can see a magnified image of a water droplet sitting on the fern. This gives us an idea of how small the plant is (each of those tiny leaves are less than 1mm across). It spreads quite quickly in the right, cool, conditions, to cover the entire pond, giving it a mottled red and green appearance. Apart from being extremely delicious for the tortoises, it is absolutely beautiful for us too.Highlights of our day included a good view of the woodpecker finch in action and several sightings of the vermilion flycatcher.
