Following in Darwin's footsteps

David Bird wrote this interesting article, published on Canada.com, about his trip to the Galapagos Islands, in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, which he describes as an almost religious experience.

I was champing at the bit to do likewise, to follow in his footsteps, but Julio informed us that no one was allowed ashore on that part of San Cristobal Island. It was to these islands that Darwin sailed on the H.M.S. Beagle in 1835 to observe and collect specimens as part of the development of his theory of natural selection, which lead to his book, On the Origin of Species.

I had taught the speciation of Darwin's finches for years in a Wildlife Ecology course on McGill's Macdonald campus and it was almost a religious experience to physically go there.
[...]
The other bird, whose name elicited giggles from everyone, was the blue-footed booby. Like most of the birds in the islands, these goofy-looking gull-like birds shamelessly danced and called to convince females to come and copulate with them.

Darwin's books, now in the "public domain", are available in free ebook format in several places, and have been nicely formatted for devices such as the Kindle and Sony Reader over at the premier ebook community mobileread.com. I have both "Origin of Species" and "Voyage of the Beagle" on my wonderful Sony Reader, I just haven't got around to reading them yet. Sometimes difficult when you have such a large library at your fingertips.

Link: Darwin books available at mobileread.com

Blue-Footed Boobies: Borat Boobs

The UK's Mirror newspaper reports that Sacha Baron Cohen (of Borat and Ali-G fame) adopted a Blue-Footed Booby for his fiancee as an unusual Valentine's Day gift.

SACHA Baron Cohen has bought fiancee Isla Fisher an unusual gift for Valentine's - it's a booby.

In fact, it's a blue-footed booby, a type of bird from the Galapagos Islands with bright blue feet.

Our wildlife source says: "Sacha has, of course, got a wacky sense of humour and he wanted to get Isla something a little different.

Galapagos Islands: Dance of the boobies

In a follow-up to a previous post, Georgina Guedes, a South African woman travelling the world, has succeeded in seeing her Blue-Footed Boobies in mating season. Her entertaining Dance of the Boobies post is now online at News24.com.

Around the next corner the rocks were white with guano, and in every depression sat two or three blue-footed birds, all completely unflustered by our arrival. I had hoped, but not really dared to believe, that we would see their much-celebrated mating dance, and here it was, being performed in front of us in all its comic glory.

The intention of the dance is to draw as much attention as possible to the boobies' blue feet. When the male spots a female he likes, he waddles over to her and starts a little rolling march, lifting alternating feet quickly, and then lowering them slowly.

The whole time he's doing this, he looks immensely proud of himself, and once the female is finally won over, she joins in his dance, and it culminates in both of them pointing their beaks to the sky in a proud finale.

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS - Time to see some boobies

Georgina Guedes is a South African woman travelling the world. She is beside herself with excitement at the prospect of seeing a blue-footed booby, and writes about her experiences for News24.com.

When I was a child, at the time when other little girls were sticking up posters of Tom Cruise in Cocktail, I harboured a deep and abiding passion for Gerald Durrell, the famous naturalist who wrote "My Family and Other Animals".

Aside from finding his long, English face handsome, and enjoying his quirky sense of humour, I thought that we would have lots to talk about. I come from an interesting family, and so did he, and we both have an interest in the wildlife with which we share this planet.

At around the same time as I was fantasising about walking on the sun-soaked beaches of Corfu with Mr Durrell, I also happened to watch a television program on the Galapagos Islands, although at the time I mistakenly called them The Archipelago Islands.

Read on at News24.com.

SIERRA CLUB COMPASS - March of the Penguins, Etc

Pat Joseph wrote to tell me about his post on the Sierra Club blog Compass entitled "March of the Penguins, Etc". Pat's post talks about how climate change could be driving plant and animal species to migrate poleward.

What with Blue-Footed Boobies near Seattle, and Floridean Manatees up near New York this is certainly a product of climate change worth monitoring.

As a side-note, I notice Al Gore's climate change movie "An Inconvenient Truth" hits DVD shelves on November 21st. This book (which just won a Quill award) and movie has been in the news quite a lot recently, and Pat actually interviewed Al Gore for the Sierra website. I've definately Pledged To See the movie...

BLUE FOOTED BOOBIES - Booby sighted in Skagit County, Washington State

Twitchers have been flocking to Washington State to try and catch sight of a young Blue Footed Booby which has been seen in Skagit County. This endangered bird is so young that its feet are still actually white...

It was the first sighting in Washington state since 1935 for a species native to the west coast of Mexico and the Galapagos Islands.

"The photos are pretty conclusive," said Bill Tweit, fishery manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Full story at SeattlePI.com.

BLUE FOOTED BOOBIES - Kodiak teenager returns from Galapagos

The Kodiak Daily Mirror.com asks 13 year old Gregory D’Elia about his favourite memory of a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands...

“That’s easy — it was booby day,” D’Elia said with a grin.

That might sound like a teenager’s way of getting a goofy word into print so his friends can snicker, but D’Elia is operating under the cover of science, biology in fact, ornithology to be specific.

When he describes the mating dance of the blue-footed booby, (Sula nebouxii) D’Elia spreads his fingers to imitate the bird’s webbed feet and moves his hands up and down slowly.

“You know that show, ‘So You Think You Can Dance?’ — I think they’d win that automatically,” he said, calling the dance “unworldly.”

Full article at KodiakDailyMirror.com.

BLUE FOOTED BOOBIES - In Darwin's Footsteps

A MARVELLOUS article by freelance writer Jim Duffy in the John Hopkins Magazine. Super photos and descriptions of Blue Footed Boobies behaviour abound - In Darwin's Footsteps

Charlie Stine, SPH '76 (PhD), A&S '83 (MA), dreamed for decades of making a pilgrimage to the Galápagos Islands. What does an ecologist look for when he finally gets the chance to make that dream a reality?

Read Jim Duffy's article at John Hopkins Magazine site - In Darwin's Footsteps

The blue-footed booby is famous mostly for being goofy. That's what gets the bird so many star turns in coffee- table books. It's got crazy-hued feet. It's got goggle eyes. It waddles like a weeble. Then it fuses all that goofiness together in an endearing mating dance that has the male of the species aiming his beak skyward while rocking first on one foot and then the other while offering a precious twig in tribute to the object of his carnal desire.

BLUE-FOOTED BOOBIES - A trip to the Marietas Islands

Here's Carissa Wright at the University of Idaho with her vacation report which included a trip to see Blue-Footed Boobies on the Marietas Islands.

Three days after our arrival, not sunburned yet but definitely wiped out by the constant heat, we bought tickets on a catamaran heading out to the Marietas Islands, about two hours from the Puerto Vallarta marina. The Marietas, the guide aboard the ship informed us, are one of only two places on earth the blue-footed booby can be found in the wild. The Galapagos Islands of Darwinian fame are the only other home to the gull-like bird.

Reaching our destination after two hours of cruising, we circled the islands in search of a place to drop anchor. It took careful examination of the bird-covered islands to spot the boobies’ distinctive powder-blue webbed feet, but spot them we did. Satisfying one objective of the excursion, we shifted our sights to the next.

BLUE FOOTED BOOBIES - Cruisin' the Galapagos

Douglas Adams mentioned the Blue-Footed Booby in a hilarious lecture he gave on the Kakapo mating segment of "Last Chance To See". You can hear the MP3 audio of this bit of his lecture on Steffan's Fun Stuff page.

In addition, here's the Wikipedia page on Blue Footed Boobies.

Vancouver's 24 Hours website has an article on vacation cruises to the Galapagos Islands, and also includes mention of the Blue Footed Booby.

Named for the giant tortoises that are endemic to this island chain, the Galapagos were discovered quite by accident in 1535. But the islands were not really put on the world map until Charles Darwin visited them in 1835. He stayed there for five weeks, studying the wildlife and gathering evidence that proved invaluable to his theory of evolution.

Formed a mere five million years ago when underwater volcanoes erupted above the ocean's surface, the isolated terrain, altitude and sunny, warm climate have made the islands a perfect sanctuary for some 58 unique species of birds - including the rare blue-footed booby - as well as sea lions, penguins, iguanas and the gigantic tortoise, which can live up to 180 years.