Española Island
Hood Island, named by English pirates back in the 1700s, is known to us today as Española, one of the oldest islands of the chain. 3.8 million years has given animal species plenty of time to evolve in the isolation of this particular environment, which is home to some endemics of its own.
The mockingbird of Española is one of the four species present on the island; this is one of the species that got Darwin’s attention back in 1835 when he visited the archipelago. He collected three of them and was able to see the physical differences they had… this triggered his realization that something strange must be going on in this place, with species so closely related but not the same: ”there is a difference between the inhabitants of the different islands…”
Male marine iguanas of Española have a very attractive green and red coloration on display during the mating season, which is at the beginning of the hot rainy months of the year. Females walk around looking for a partner, while these attractive boys pose on the rocks, exhibiting their beautiful combination of colors.
As we walked on the trails that were once Pahoa-hoe lava flows, we had a chance to see the entire breeding cycle of the Nazca boobies: couples courting, couples making a nest, couples preening each other, parents incubating eggs and, finally, parents takings turns to protect brand new chicks from the Galápagos hawks that were in the vicinity.
These are a few of the experiences that make the Galápagos an enchanted archipelago; nowhere else but here does nature gives us the opportunity to witness these early processes of life taking place right in front of us.
We realize that these fragile pristine ecosystems need to be conserved in time, not for us or our future generations but for their own inhabitants, the animal species that belong here and nowhere else!
