birding never sleeps: GALAPAGOS part 4: Santiago, Bartolome, North Seymour and Santa Cruz (13-14 May 2025)

GALAPAGOS part 4: Santiago, Bartolome, North Seymour and Santa Cruz (13-14 May 2025)

Tuesday 13 May 2025. SANTIAGO. I was on deck at 05:55 to find we were anchored off Puerto Egas on the western edge of Santiago, having arrived several hours earlier. Going up onto the upper deck to look around I was surprised to see a Great Blue Heron standing on an upturned canoe. It wasn’t much smaller than me with a vicious dagger like bill so I didn’t approach too close. A close Lava Heron flypast was much less concerning. Breakfast at 07:00 and a panga onto Puerto Egas beach at 08:00 for a walk following the coastline through scrub and returning along the beach/lava rocks. Pleasant but not very productive with Small and Medium Ground Finches and Galapagos Mockingbird almost outdone by flighty Queen Butterflies, Large Painted Locusts, Land Lizards and Land Iguanas. We were back on board at 10:30 and I stayed there while the rest changed and returned to the beach to swim/snorkel. I would have returned too visitors are not allowed to be there unattended. At noon we raised the anchor and headed east around the northern shore of Santiago, having lunch as we sailed, and arrived at BARTOLOME at 15:00. Being a weak swimmer and having had water seep through my beard filling my mask when trying snorkeling 20 years ago I stayed on board while another snorkeling session took place. Had I inadvertently booked on a snorkeling trip? At 16:30 we had a dry landing on steps at Bartolome which we followed up to a peak giving spectacular views of Santiago and all the way to a distant Chinese Hat. It looked vaguely familiar and Darwin said it was where one of the most memorable scenes from the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World had been filmed (Russell Crowe it turned out had been based on the Chacalote Explorer’s companion ship the Beluga when filming in Galapagos). We were back on board at 18:15 as the sun was setting. Birds seen were 8 Galapagos Doves, American Oystercatcher, 3 Hudsonian Whimbrel, 20 Brown Noddies, 28 Elliot’s and a Wedge-rumped Storm Petrel, 2 Galapagos Petrels, 20 Galapagos Shearwaters, 15 Magnificent Frigatebirds, 20 Nazca and 25 Blue-footed Boobies, 15 Brown Pelicans, 3 Lava Herons, 2 Great Blue Herons, Galapagos Hawk, 5 Galapagos Mockingbirds, Mangrove Warbler and 6 Small and 2 Medium Ground Finches.

Great Blue Heron on the Chacalote Explorer at Puerto Egas

Lava Heron flypast

13 May itinerary

Elliot's Storm Petrel at Puerto Egas

Puerto Egas from the shore

female Small Ground Finch at Puerto Egas

male Small Ground Finch at Puerto Egas

male Medium Ground Finch at Puerto Egas

Large Painted Locust (8cm long)

Land Iguana at Puerto Egas (length up to 1.5m)

Lava Lizard (length up to 30cm)

Galapagos Mockingbird

Galapagos Dove at Puerto Egas

Queen butterfly, similar to a Monarch on the underwing

quite different from above although rarely settle (my excuse for an out of focus image)

Hudsonian Whimbrel at Puerto Egas

Galapagos Sea Lion

Marine Iguana (up to 1.5m)

juvenile Lava Heron with crab at Puerto Egas

adult Lava Heron at Puerto Egas

Brown Noddy at Puerto Egas

Our guide Darwin told us that Brown Boobies often sat on the heads of Brown Pelicans hoping to snatch morsels of anything the pelican caught. It sounded a bit fanciful to me and I didn't expect to see it, let alone get photos

Puerto Egas beach - swimmers and snorkelers but no unattended birders allowed

leaving Puerto Egas

female Magnificent Frigatebird from Chacalote Explorer

male Magnificent Frigatebird

Pinnacle Rock, Bartolome

Bartolome

Pinnacle Rock

Medium Ground Finch on Bartolome

distant view of very distinctive Chinese Hat with Santiago's extensive lava fields in the middle distance

stunning views from the lookout, as in a scene from Master and Commander

looking south from the viewpoint

me at the viewpoint

returning at sunset to perhaps the busiest anchorage we visited

Wednesday 14 May 2025. NORTH SEYMOUR. An early start, departing at 06:00 for a dry landing on the small island of North Seymour having arrived offshore late the previous evening. An amazing bird-filled island, this was the Galapagos I was expecting/had hoped for. We were there until 07:30 walking a marked tail through a Blue-footed Booby and mostly Great Frigatebird colony with superb Swallow-tailed Gulls on the coast at either end of the walk and Red-billed Tropicbirds overhead. I could have stayed watching the boobies shaking their feet and sky-pointing all day but we were on a tight schedule and set off for nearby SANTA CRUZ. We moored in the Canal de Itabaca at the northern end of Santa Cruz were ferried from the Chacalote Explorer to the jetty in a panga. A bus was waiting to take us up the main highway into the highlands where we stopped at two small roadside craters - Los Gemelos (The Twins). We spent half an hour or so on a nice loop trail through decent forest - some actual birding and not in the heat of the day. We saw several Small Tree Finches, 2 Green Warbler-Finches and 2 nuthatch-like Woodpecker Finches. Continuing south and down into more agricultural areas our next stop was a Tortoise Ranch with a lava tunnel. It was rather touristy with few birds seen in its open woodland, not helped by constant grass cutting nearby making it hard to hear anything. We continued on to Enchanted Lodge for lunch where in better weather than our previous visit we saw the roosting American Barn Owl rather poorly but a brief walk in woodland failed to find any finches although Darwin thought he heard a Vegetarian some distance away. We continued into Puerto Ayora where an hour was allocated to shopping or wandering around the town, I headed to a park shown in green on a town map, to find it was a skate park. We left Puerto Ayora at 16:00 and headed back north into the highlands. We stopped just north of Los Gemelos and had 30 minutes birding on the dirt road leading to the Red Cinder Mine. I had the impression we weren't supposed to be here so full credit to Darwin for stopping, although it was a rather frustrating experience. I saw several finches that mostly gave poor/unsatisfactory views, starting with what looked like a male Large Tree/Vegetarian Finch that flew over but did not appear to stop. I saw what I thought was a female Large Tree Finch and took some rushed photos of it and several other finches that were giving fleeting views in the hope of identifying some later, although this didn't work out too well with some remaining unidentified. Reviewing them with Darwin that evening we were happy with the female Large Tree Finch and considered some of the others to be of a male Large Ground Finch. I was convinced at the time but seeing Large Ground Finches on Genovesa later in the trip introduced some doubts. Also the habitat didn't seem ideal although eBird shows a number of Large Ground Finch records for this site around that time. Another poor image looked like a male Vegetarian Finch, possibly the Large Tree/Vegetarian Finch I’d seen flying over? Our limited time at the site was over all too soon and it was disappointing that we hadn't stopped there on either or both of the previous occasions we'd driven past. We wouldn't be doing so again. Continuing to the Canal de Itabaca we arrived back onboard the Chacalote Explorer at 17:40. Birds seen were 2 Smooth-billed Anis, 52 Swallow-tailed Gulls, 20 Brown Noddies, 4 Elliot’s Storm Petrels, 20 Galapagos Shearwaters, 20 Magnificent and 40 Great Frigatebirds, 2 Red-footed and 60 Blue-footed Boobies, 15 Brown Pelicans, 130 Western Cattle Egrets, American Barn Owl, Galapagos Flycatcher, 3 Galapagos Mockingbirds, 8 Mangrove Warblers and a selection of finches identified with varying degrees of confidence - 2 Green Warbler-Finches, 2 Woodpecker Finches, Vegetarian Finch, a female Large and 3+ Small Tree Finches, 25 Small, a presumed Large and several Medium Ground Finches.