Española Island
If you had visited Española 40 years ago, all you would have found there unfortunately were goats, not many seabirds and just 14 saddle-backed tortoises throughout the 64 square kilometers of this small island. Nowadays, there are no introduced species on the island, and over 2000 tortoises have been repatriated! This is our greatest and most successful conservation story in Galápagos to date. The wonderful wildlife experience our guests have on this island is a direct result of these efforts. The morning was clear; it promised us a great day for all kinds of encounters with wildness. It was time to gain a little more knowledge about this stunning paradise.
Punta Suarez at Española is a real highlight among the visitors’ sites of the Galápagos archipelago. It is situated on the most western side of the island where the fauna is concentrated. It gives us a wonderful and surprising opportunity to see evidence of the high percentage of endemism of the archipelago. The month of August, being the peak of the cold season, is the time of year where a great display of many animals’ breeding processes take place and that we witnessed today.
As we approached shore, marine iguanas, the only seagoing lizard in the world, were spotted feeding on the rocks’ algae. The subspecies that lives on Española is endemic to this island. We spotted several in the presence of red sally lightfoot crabs. We continued our walk welcomed by big and colorful lava lizards – the most ubiquitous reptiles of the arid lowlands. The push-up behavior of this species is usually associated with terrestrial aggression or courtship and may be shown by both sexes. On Española we can find three of the 13 Darwin finches’ species of the Galápagos. These three species are very different, the warbler finch, the large ground cactus finch and small ground finch. As we advanced on the boulders by the cliff, we saw blue-footed booby and Nazca booby colonies, swallow-tailed gulls, red-billed tropicbirds and the waved albatross. The later is one of the largest birds in the island weighing 3 to 4 Kg and with a wingspan of over two meters. This aristocratic-looking creature nests only on Española Island. As we walked further inland we observed the amazing display of a Galápagos hawk, which was flying around the albatross colony looking for some albatross chicks that were only few days old.
The afternoon at Gardner Bay was full of activities. Beginner snorkelers had great fun at the beach, and others enjoyed deep-water snorkeling, glass-bottom boat outings, and kayaking on a nice calm bay. We spotted several species of colorful tropical fish and also different kinds of sea stars.
This lovely day is fading in time and will never come back. We are hoping to continue our incredible experiences and expeditions tomorrow.
