Our journey began in earnest by flying to San Cristóbal Island in the Galapagos. The first afternoon, I took a walk through the forest and up a hill to a lookout where we hoped to see some frigate birds. On the way, we spotted a variety of birds. Above is a medium ground finch.
There is a yellow warbler nesting in a tree near the path. This one is, I believe, a female.
As near as I can tell, this is a male lava lizard. They like to perch on a piece of lava and do push-up to attract a female.
Hre is another medium ground finch. The finches here are totally crazy, hence the generic name. You cannot distinguish one sort of finch from another by feather color, markings, or beak color. These all vary by gender, season, breeding/non-breeding, age, and possibly even the mood they are in (just kidding on that last one). Black color means it is older and a black beak means it is breeding (I think). This really elevates Darwin in my estimation and he was already pretty far up there. That he could sort this out and make sense of this is nothing short of amazing.
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