Espanola Island, Mother’s Day
It is appropriate to post a picture of a mother blue footed booby on Mother’s Day. I can tell this bird is a female by the black pigment ring around her pupil, and the fact that she “honked” rather than whistled. There were plenty of boobies courting and incubating all along the rocky trail that we followed this morning at Punta Suarez, Espanola Island. This handsome female booby had feet of a particularly lovely shade of blue and posed nicely for countless photos as we trooped past her. This month Espanola Island is absolutely alive with activity. The huge blue foot colony is in peak courting and breeding commotion. Blue foots are opportunist breeders: if the fishing is good, then a few individuals start dancing and whistling and soon hundreds of “turned on” boobies are sky pointing, passing tiny sticks back and forth and parading around their chosen nest site, advertising their brilliant blue feet. Already many of the boobies have eggs and some even have tiny newly hatched chicks.
The endemic waved albatross are also breeding. We saw the first albatross egg last week, and there were several pairs along the trail this morning. If they have a good year, and are able to find enough food, in a couple of months we may be seeing the fat fluffy “feather duster” grey chicks of the albatross.
During the afternoon we found many more “mothers” on a spectacular fine white sand beach at Gardner Bay on the northern tip of the same island. The sea lions were lazing in the sun, several pups were noisily nursing and others romped in the surf. We had time to snorkel in the deep water, take a glass bottom boat outing, learn to snorkel in the shallows and stroll unhurriedly along the beach. It was a glorious day, and all of the moms who are travelling with us would surely agree, that a lovelier place to spend our special day would be hard to imagine!
It is appropriate to post a picture of a mother blue footed booby on Mother’s Day. I can tell this bird is a female by the black pigment ring around her pupil, and the fact that she “honked” rather than whistled. There were plenty of boobies courting and incubating all along the rocky trail that we followed this morning at Punta Suarez, Espanola Island. This handsome female booby had feet of a particularly lovely shade of blue and posed nicely for countless photos as we trooped past her. This month Espanola Island is absolutely alive with activity. The huge blue foot colony is in peak courting and breeding commotion. Blue foots are opportunist breeders: if the fishing is good, then a few individuals start dancing and whistling and soon hundreds of “turned on” boobies are sky pointing, passing tiny sticks back and forth and parading around their chosen nest site, advertising their brilliant blue feet. Already many of the boobies have eggs and some even have tiny newly hatched chicks.
The endemic waved albatross are also breeding. We saw the first albatross egg last week, and there were several pairs along the trail this morning. If they have a good year, and are able to find enough food, in a couple of months we may be seeing the fat fluffy “feather duster” grey chicks of the albatross.
During the afternoon we found many more “mothers” on a spectacular fine white sand beach at Gardner Bay on the northern tip of the same island. The sea lions were lazing in the sun, several pups were noisily nursing and others romped in the surf. We had time to snorkel in the deep water, take a glass bottom boat outing, learn to snorkel in the shallows and stroll unhurriedly along the beach. It was a glorious day, and all of the moms who are travelling with us would surely agree, that a lovelier place to spend our special day would be hard to imagine!
