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This one was photographed at Galapaguera, on San
Cristobal island, which is one of the few places where you can
see giant tortoises in a completely natural environment. Because
there is quite a lot of low vegetation on San Cristobal, the tortoise
has a dome-shaped shell. Where the vegetation grows higher up, tortoises
have a saddleback-shaped shell so that they can lift their heads
higher to get at the leaves. |
 The
Galapagos Islands have three species of booby; the name "booby"
comes from "bobo", the Spanish for "clown", and
you can see why when you look at this red-footed specimen! The red-footed
booby feeds a long way out to sea, so that is why we have put it in
the "land" section - on land is probably the only place
you will see it. |
 When
the frigate birds come back to land after feeding, they nest in low
bushes. During the mating season, male frigate birds like this one
inflate the skin under their chins and gaze at the sky, hoping to
catch the attention of a female as she flies overhead. Sometimes they
take off with their pouches like this, which makes them fly a bit
wobbly!
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The flightless cormorant, which can only be found on the west coast
of Isabela or on Fernandina
island, is endemic to the Galapagos. It's such a good swimmer that
it didn't need to fly anywhere and gradually lost the use of its wings.
In the film "Master and Commander" (2003), this was the one thing in the Galapagos that the scientist desperately wanted to see, but he never did. As they left to chase pirates for the last time, the Captain said "Well, it's not going anywhere, is it?" which isn't quite true, as the flightless cormorant is on the list of the world's endangered species. |
 The
Galapagos land iguana lives on cactus, and eats its fruits, flowers,
and sometimes as you see here its bark. It's about three feet long
when full grown, and although it gives the impression of being quite
lazy, it can run surprisingly fast when it wants to. |
