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Published: February 14th 2010
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Puerto Ayora
The main city of Isla Santa Cruz is a busy one, with 300 taxis, and a lot of building going on. The streets are clean and everywhere on the taxi boats, ships and other vessels in the bay it says that grabage should not be thrown into the ocean. So far so good (apart from the taxis, which make me absolute crazy - the sheer number is way too much) but the petrol price is very low compared to swedish standards. Here a gallon (ca 4 litres) cost 1,50 $. That equivilates to 1/4 of the price we pay in Sweden. The emissions are no less here, and there are lots of cars and motos (scooters) that just stand with engine on, while the owner is either shopping or chatting with the café keeper. I have an issue with those people but I will speak no more of that here.
Along the main street along the ocean front there is the mayority of the city´s souvenier and diving/tour agencies as well as restaurants. The air is full with fregate birds, pelicans and lava gulls. The sidewalk we share with sleeping marine iguanas and lava lizards, when the
fishermen come in with their catch the selling arena comes to life, with pelicans and sea lions fighting for a piece of the fish rinse. Tourists amaze at this daily cirkus and it is a great spectacle to watch. The tourists are not only rich retired people, but also young people, like ourselves, apparently have the money (or the money of their parents) to come and enjoy the world of Galápagos. Many don´t even do a cruise beacuse many attractive places can be visited ba day tours. Only the greedy or choosy "have" to go on a cruise. Surprisingly alot is accessible without doing a cruise. Nevertheless, in a week and a half we will be on our ship Angelique, and although I love the field work I am very excited about the cruise, and M as well. With the cruise we will reach islands that cannot be reached on day trips. Bird colonies, fabulous geology and snorkelling is to be expected. :-)
Field work
The first thing for us to do was to learn the song of the two birds we were supposed to observe. By learning th esong we could find their nests, and with
them we get the breeding success. We do observational studies to confirm whether the nests are active or not. The males build display nests of moss up in the canopy of the endemic scalesia trees, and they camouflage well with the dead leaves. But if they are not yet paired, the males sing like crazy to find a female. Sadly there are many bachelors around, so many of the nests found will be nothing else than display nests. Regardless of these sad blokes who never hitch up with a mate, enough do, so we keep observing them, and if there is no activity for a certain amount of time, we cut down the nest to try to assertain the reason for failure. The critical stage is when the chicks have hatched, because that is when they are interesting for the parasite fly. The adult fly feeds on fruit, but they lay their eggs in the nostrils of chicks, the fly eggs soon hatch, and the small larvae crawl into the bottom of the nest. At night the larvae crawl up to the chicks in the nest and suck their blood. The chicks die either of heamoglobin loss or fatigue, due
to loss of sleep during the night and then they are too tired to beg for food, when their parents come to feed them in the morning. It is a horrible death and it seems the loss of clutches is huge.
We are comparing the breeding success between the warbler finch (who has decreased a lot the last ten years) and the small tree finch who are still steady in numbers. The comparison is not clean-cut since their ecology is not a full match - but thats as close as we get apparently.
We have a small mat with us and we lie down during the observations, all due to the angle of observation. Sitting will force your neck in a horrible position. The scalesia trees are not high, but because of the often intense vegetation it is often very good to lye close to the base of the tree to do the observation. The forest is full with invasive species, such as thorny mora (the black berry) which is everywhere. An ongoing experiment is though trying to get it under controll, with round up (herbicide), there is now a huge area that looks like a logged area. But the situation is up-side-down since all the undergrowth is gone and only the trees are standing.
As we work we are often accompanied by the Galápagos flycathcher, or lately the short eared owl. The vermillion flycatcher is a black and red beauty (male), also very unshy of our presence. It is a true pleasure to work in this environment, with conservation. It is a dream come true.
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