Bird Day - North Seymour and Bachas Beach (Santa Cruz)

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North Seymour Island in the morning: the best bird day of the trip. Our first blue-footed boobies and frigates! We literally got off the dinghies and there were some there waiting for us on the shore! I love their blue feet! And they're pretty cool looking besides that. Plus they're the only bird in the Galapagos that dances. They have a mating dance that consists of raising their feet in high marching steps, flapping withs, whistling (males) and cawing (females). We never saw a complete dance, but we saw enough partial ones to get the idea. Some of them had eggs that they were incubating and a couple of them got up to stretch while we were there so we got to see the eggs! They sit so still on the eggs! The other coolest birds are definitely the frigates. The males have big red pouches on their necks that blow up when they're trying to attract the femals. They build nests and then puff themselves out and the females choose one. It's rare to see them flying with their pouches inflates, but we saw some! Even before we got to the island! At first we only saw the frigates from a distance, but then there were some that we were able to get pretty close to! It's amazing how fearless all the animals are! They have no reason to fear humans, so they don't. All the animals we are able to get really close to!
We also saw land iguanas, swallow-tail gulls (only nocturnal gull in the world), pelicans, sea lions (a young one eating an octopus!), red-billed tropic birds, and some other birds that I don't remember the names of.

We also went snorkelling in the morning, from the dinghies, right off the coast of the island. We were getting ready to get out of the boats into the water (in fact Pete already had) when guess what our guide spotted??? Orcas! 2 of them! And one of them swam RIGHT by and under our boat! Literally (not even exaggerating a little bit here) one swam right next to the dinghie on my side and I could've reached my hand into the water and touched it! It was a small one, slightly smaller than the boat. Amazing! Of course then we were all kind of worried about getting into the water, but when they were a little ways off we did. Not too far away though, so technically we swam with orcas... Our guide, who grew up in the Galapagos and has been working as a guide for 10 years, had only seen orcas 5 times before this. So we were really lucky! We also saw a bunch of fish, a couple sting rays, and a white-tipped reef shark.
It was an excellent first morning! One of my favorite islands!

In the afternoon we went to Bachas Beach on the island of Santa Cruz. Lots of sea turtle nests, but no turtles (a bunch of big crater-like holes in the sand). We also saw a lava gull (kind of rare - about twice a month), heron, marine iguanas, pelican, and tons of crabs! Bright orange and red with some blue parts. We saw a turtle's head briefly before it dove under on our way back to the boat.

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