Saturday 9 July 2016

Northward bound

Well it has been a great couple of weeks at home, with an opportunity to catch up on things at home, visit friends, and a bit of mountain biking as well.  Been trying to spend some time updating our website - Wrybill Birding Tours, NZ - and after changing over to the new site at the end of May it is looking pretty good.  I had hoped to spend a little time on my own website - Eco-Vista: Photography & Research - but this didn't happen.  I want to give the galleries a major overhaul and start adding in some new images...but where does the time go!

So, now it is the evening before leaving, I have just bottled 18 litres of beer (damn nice it is too!), and about to have dinner and then put down a beer to ferment whilst I am away for the next wee while.  Luckily with the WilliamsWarn system I have it is so automated, I just need to get the temperature turned down in about 10 days and it can sit there until I get back...to drink it!  Perfect!

The Galapagos was just an incredible trip - everything I hoped it would be and more.  We had two fantastic cruises, visiting much of the Archipelago over the two weeks.  We had a great team working onboard and really fun times, and a great group of guests on each trip.  It is certainly a place I'd love to get back to and hope I get the opportunity at some stage.  With little time to write, I figured a few visual highlights could do the talking for me...enjoy!


Espanola mockingbirds...doing what the Galapagos mockingbirds do!

We watched a pair of waved albatross with a third interloper for almost an hour, what awesome birds!

Sunset on Espanola with Nazca boobies silhouetted

The ever present Sally lightfoot crab

Frigates coming in to take fish scraps from the fish market at Puerto Ayora

Possibly one of the most stunning gulls in not such a stunning pose!

Male great frigate doing his thing

Sunset in Darwin Bay, Genovesa Island

Blue-footed booby getting into it

A rather rare bird these days, male Vermillion flycatcher in the setting sun

Flightless cormorant, what a cool bird!


Lava cactus, growing, rather unsurprisingly, out of the lava on Fernandina

Galapagos penguin and a marine iguana

Galapagos hawk 'playing' with a ghost crab


Blue-footed boobies diving for fish just off the beach

Male frigate bird with a beak full of small fish

Male frigatebird scooping up fish by the beakful

Great blue heron tossing a fish around

Spines on a prickley pear cactus

Woodpecker finch, the last species I got to see, having seen most of the finches

Sunset on our last evening in the Galapagos