A day trip to an island about 40km off-shore from Puerto Lopez. It has substantial seabird colonies, including some of the key species from Galapagos, but is obviously much cheaper, hence the unofficial title "Poor-man's Galapagos".
The most obvious species are
Magnificent Frigatebirds, of which there are about 8,000.
Blue-footed Booby are in similar numbers, often building nests on the footpaths around the island.
Nazca Booby come in at about 2,000, with
Red-billed Tropicbird in the high hundreds. Rarer breeding birds include about 8 pairs of
Red-footed Booby (we saw 2 nests) and 4 pairs of Waved Albatross. The Albatross nests were in a part of the island that has been closed to tourists for a couple of years, so no sightings for us sadly. One seabird I didn't expect was a
Manx Shearwater which flew past the boat on the way out.
Landbirds were few and mostly
Long-tailed Mockingbird and
Southern Beardless Tyrannulet.
Collared Warbling-Finch was very nice and quite common, and a single
Baird's Flycatcher was close to the start of the trails.
Red-billed Tropicbird. Just about my favourite seabird, absolutely fabulous.
Initially identified as
Galapagos Shearwater as the only small black and white shearwater seen regularly in Ecuadorian waters, this turns out to be a
Manx Shearwater. Thanks to Roger Ahlman for pointing this out.
A small population is believed to exist in the islands off the northern
part of South America. There are records from Galapagos, Panama and
Costa Rica, as well as at sea. This is the first known record from
mainland Ecuador! So I lose a lifer, but gain a country first. I'll take
that deal!
Blue-footed Booby. Brilliant birds, and quite as daft as the name suggests. In our group were people from Germany and Quebec, and the names of this species in German, French and English all translate to "Blue-footed Idiot"
They are quite fascinated with their own feet, and will gaze at them in astonishment before waggling them at everyone else so they can appreciate the wonderful blueness.
Nazca Booby. Males and females of both Nazca and Blue-foots are seperable by size (females are bigger) and call. In both cases the call of the male is a wheezy whistle, while the female has a raucous honk.
Red-footed Booby. A tiny population hangs on in one tiny corner of the island. We could only see 2 of the 8 known nests, the rest were out of sight, further down in the same gully. No adults were visible at all.
Magnificent Frigatebird.
Collared Warbling-Finch. The race on the island has a pale bill, elsewhere this species has a black bill.
Baird's Flycatcher
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