The You Yangs and Werribee – Welcome to Australia

We have long been home from our trip to Australia but I had one of the “fevers” that seem to be a feature of the island continent, at least there are lots of scary illnesses to read about. My illness was characterized by a modest fever, an encephalitis (a symptom, not a disease), and a prolonged desire to just stay in bed. As with all viruses sooner or later you die or get better and fortunately it was the latter for me. 


So I will now start on the blog pages that, I hope, will give a sense of this gorgeous place. Over several blog pages I will show where we went (and what we saw) as we traveled. We landed in Melbourne after a lifetime on an aircraft (but not as bad as the return trip) and took the SkyBus from the airport into the city. We were headed for a town on the southern edge of the city (Port Melbourne) and decided to get our one look at big buildings as we headed in from the airport. From the CBD (central business district, a phrase used in most towns) we caught a taxi to our home for the next three nights and made arrangements with the driver to return to deliver us back to the airport for our flight to Tasmania.  But in the meantime we had the Melbourne area to look over.


As our hosts had left us a key we entered the beachside house, found our room, left our gear, washed our faces, grabbed our binoculars and went for a walk. We walked along the beach and then cut up a walking path (paved and signed) along some ponds and shrubby growth. We had twenty or so species of birds, no mammals, and a chance to get some fresh air. Our host returned from work at about 2:00pm and we headed out for an afternoon of local birding. Australia is developed in a nice way; there are residential blocks, cities, and a lot of parkland and countryside. We went into the countryside and had a great time, got the lay of the land, and forty-seven species of Australian birds.


We used our heads and did not join our hosts for an evening out and as a matter of fact did the same the next night. We were very tired and out of sync with the moon, stars, and daylight. So we went to bed early and spent the whole of the next day out birding. We started with a few local stops and then went to the You Yangs and from there to the Werribee Treatment Plant. Though there is a great deal to say and write about I will try to insert images from here on and use the captions as dumping grounds for ideas and memories.

One of the first things our host (a doctor and dedicated birder) asked Fran as we were driving along was, “what first strikes you as different from the US?” Fran commented on the architecture, but certainly the road signs and cautions were different from anything we are used to. Once in New Mexico a parking lot had a sign that advised you to watch for rattlesnakes but the snake-sign was rather surprising. No one asked me, but the first thing I noticed about residential Australia was that each and every corner or intersection was not adorned with one or more gas stations and quick food places like we find here.
The Western Treatment Plant (Werribee) is what they call a sewerage farm. Before you quickly move on to a more savory page, let me say that we never saw sewage or a treatment plant; we saw more than 25,000 acres of wetlands, lakes, pools, grasslands, woods, and farm land. It is a grand wildlife preserve and odor free. We had many rare birds here and well over 100 species in total. There are miles and miles (oops, I mean kilometers and kilometers) of roads and it would take dozens of visits before you learned your way around. There are gates and keys and permits and dull spots and very busy spots; we were lucky to have a guide very experienced with the birds, roads, and gates. The image above is of a large wet area with nest boxes for ducks and also for roosting Australian Pelicans. The trees are adorned with three species of cormorants.
A regional park called the You Yangs is land on a series of granite hills rising from a basalt plain. The rock, gravel, and plants have been harvested for more than a century. The current park is being replanted with native vegetation. There are more than 40 kilometers of mountain bike trails (and more for horse-riding) here as well as picnic areas, walking trails, and more than 200 species of birds. The Spotted Pardalote shown below is a You Yangs bird. We walked a little here but had almost all the target birds near the gate. There was one bicyclist and one dog-walker in the area while we were there. It was our first exposure to the woodland plants of the area. We were to become very familiar with eucalypts.

This views shown above and below are along the Werribee River and shows the sedimentary substrate found in much of the area. The granite of the You Yangs stands out from the rest of the region. The eucalypts growing in this area had been harvested and the terrain turned into agricultural lands. As the lower levels floods annually it was largely pasture (paddock) land for livestock.

Our stay in the Melbourne area turned out to be way too short. There are coastal area and beaches, islands, penguins and platypuses, and a variety eucalypt forests to look at – and we tried, but left a lot undone. Below is a brief selection of the bird life. Once we arrived back in the States people asked about our hosts, Melbourne, the food, and so on and we realized that we mostly take pictures of birds, not cultural trappings or people. So here are a few of the birds. There will be another six or more Australia blogs so the cultural stuff will seep in…… 
The shorebirds were quite different here; this Red-necked Avocet is very similar in size and shape to ours yet strikingly different. The same can be said for the Australian stilt; Black-winged and Banded. The migrants from Asia that reach Australia do not always descend to Victoria and Tasmania. But we did see lots of Sharp-tailed Sandpipers and Greenshanks. The majority of Australian birds do not migrate from Australia thus there are many shorebirds that are found year-round. The eye-catching Red-kneed Dotterel, shown below, is one of those year-round birds. 
Perhaps the most exciting group of birds and the most difficult to deal with, is the Honeyeater complex. There are Honeyeaters, Wattlebirds, Miners, Friarbirds, Chats, and Spinebills in this large group of (at least) seventy-four species. Had Darwin seen these birds the Mockingbirds and Finches of the Galapagos would be merely an afterthought. These birds are often similar in appearance but restricted to specific geography or vegetation. They are adaptation in motion – and most of them are pretty common (if you go to the right place). The New Holland Honeyeater is depicted below and is a widespread and common bird along the east and southern coasts. But evolution persists even within a group that has been isolated for 70 million years – there are six separable races or geographically restricted populations. The second bird down is a White-plumed Honeyeater, a widespread and common bird in most of Australia.

Fran’s first Laughing Kookaburra was in the fog and mist that shrouded the You Yangs when we arrived. The fog soon lifted and a better view of this very large kingfisher was had by all. They are common along the eastern side of the continent and are as raucous and visible as you read about. An Australian icon, but still a goofy sort of bird of the forests and woodlands.

The bird below is tiny. It is one of three pardalotes found in Australia; two are common and one is very rare. They build a domed nest in holes in trees or in tunnels in the ground. This Spotted Pardalote is bringing dry grasses to its tunnel. The Spotted Pardalote is common along the eastern and southern part of the continent and Striated Pardalotes are found pretty much everywhere. There are many populations of each type.

 
The bird below looks much like a Barn Swallow. We have Barn Swallows but so does Europe, Africa, and Asia. Australia has the Welcome Swallow. It is found everywhere but the most barren of the interior deserts. Small numbers of migrant Barn Swallows do reach northern Australia (The Top End) in the Australian summer and can be told from the Welcome Swallow by the whiter belly and dark band separating the white from the reddish throat.

The next blog will introduce the island state of Tasmania. The future blogs will describe the continent and then we will travel through Victoria and southern New South Wales. 
There is a lot more to show and tell.

Niagara Falls; Volume and Width

 I know that tourism, especially local tourism, can be both hokey and important. Niagara Falls meets both sides of that description. The town is not too attractive, the roads are poorly maintained, the hotels are average, yet the state park and the falls are compelling. The Niagara River is short but powerful.

About 18% of the world’s fresh water is in the Great Lakes System. The water in the Great Lakes System would cover the lower 48 states to a depth of 3.5 feet if it were allowed. The falls have about 6,000,000 cubic feet of water per minute pass over the (two) edges. The Niagara River connects Lakes Erie and Ontario. The Canadian side has about 2200 linear feet of falling water. The US side has about 850 feet. There are about 500 higher waterfalls around the world but few have the combination volume and elevation seen at Niagara.

Geologically the Niagara River follows the edge of the Niagara Escarpment. This sharp edge is about 1000 miles long and runs from Manitoulin Island in northeast Lake Huron on down into the central US. There are many escarpments around the world that are rifts or fault lines; in this case, the Niagara Escarpment is the ancient edge of a sea floor that has been uplifted and shaped by erosion. This is not the most usual circumstance for a river passage and there are some odd (and specific) geological features to the river channel. For instance there are gravel beaches located almost 500′ above any current body of water. 
The various layers of sedimentary stone erode at different rates. Softer layers can be undermined causing the upper layers to cave in. This happened twice in the 20th century to the American Falls. The entire edge of the falls erodes as well. In the past 350 years the lip of the falls has moved considerably southward. Overall, it has moved about 7 miles in 12,500 years (since the glaciers melted away). This is not speedy I have to admit but it is rock after all and all there is is time. The river is about 170 feet deep at the base of the falls. 
                                              
The Niagara River is the natural outlet from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. It is flowing northward, making the erosion at the falls wear to the south. The St. Lawrence River then drains Lake Ontario northeasterly into the Atlantic Ocean north of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula (which is north of New Brunswick) – the water sort of crashing into the island of Newfoundland.
There are many Maid of the Mist boats that take you into the spray near the turmoil at the base of the falls. They ride is about 35 minutes, very wet, and reasonable in cost at $13.50 per person.
The tour aboard the Maid of the Mist (actually there are many Maids) is rather nice. The narration is hard to hear but the ponchos are adequate to keep you reasonable dry and the perspective from the bottom of the falls is rather grand.
One of the best perspectives is to be down on the lower river and look up at the falls. The sense of power  is quite real. The look from the boat seems more natural; you are on a river looking at the falls, but to see the same thing from terra firma is quite different. The state park at the US falls is rather nice. It is planted, has large trees, and is not tacky. The Canadian Falls are much wider and have about four time the volume as do the US falls. But, the boats take you right into the base of both waterfalls.

Lastly, I would be remiss not to mention that the slope between the two falls is a huge nesting site for Ring-billed Gulls. One of these last images (below) will show hundreds of whitish dots – those are gulls.
The boardwalks at the base of the Bridal Veil Falls are misty and extensive.

There are many views from the Maid of the Mist. Those with rainbows are nice, those with the roar of the falls in your ears are nice, those that are very wet and windblown are less nice. Buying a ticket on the Maid s the Mist also allows access to the viewing tower. This is a nice place from which to take pictures. 

The Michigan Woods, etc.

Though the Kirtland’s Warbler was the target of the trip there was a great deal to see and enjoy. The following images are a representation (and annotation of the outing).

We were impressed with the huge lilacs that were all over central Michigan. We found that central Michigan, like many rural areas, places landscaping rather low on the list of urgent things to do. We saw more old 4x4s and snow machines than we saw mowed lawns. But the lilacs were great!

Lilacs were everywhere and almost always in full bloom.

Pileated Woodpeckers were quite common and were seen every day. Woodpeckers the size of a crow are pretty impressive. But it was much easier to photograph the excavations that they make than to photograph the birds.
Mesick, Michigan is the mushroom capital of the US; so they say. The morels were selling from roadside trucks for as low as $40 a pound but where half again higher in the stores. They may grow mushrooms here as well, but the morels were the highlight when we went through.

In the winter we see a lot of Ring-billed Gulls here on the Atlantic coast. These are birds that nest in north-central US and south-central Canada and then fly east along the St. Lawrence to the coast. Dave Winfield hit a Ring-billed Gull with a baseball in warm-ups in the Toronto outfield one evening – remember that? It’s a wonder that more don’t get hit as there are tens of thousands of Ring-bills that migrate through the Toronto area. There were easy 4000 pairs nesting on this dike road through a sewage treatment facility – it was a narrow and noisy (and messy) ride.

This Hairy Woodpecker was sunning on a tree trunk. The woodlands were mostly deciduous with a large proportion of the trees being Sugar Maple. Though it turned out to be coals-to-Newcastle we brought New England maple syrup for house-gifts. 

The two grosbeaks shown above were in an area of old-growth forest called the Hartwick Pines – though it was mostly hemlock. The Rose-breasted and Evening Grosbeaks are no longer considered to be close relatives. On the new Michigan bird lists (taxonomically arranged and showing evolutionary similarities) there are at least 22 species listed between them; including the blackbirds, meadowlarks, grackles, cowbirds, finches, crossbills, and siskins. There are many more birds between them on a US list….. isn’t DNA grand?

 The birds below are Cedar Waxwings. A soft-plumaged species found throughout North America.

The bird below is an Eastern Kingbird. This is a bold and obvious species in open areas with tall trees anywhere in the US. It always surprises me to see flocks of them in the Peruvian Amazon during our winter. We both seem to enjoy the warmth of the tropics in January.
The last three images are of sparrows that were seen in with the Kirtland’s Warblers. The Jack Pine habitat seemed to harbor a nice array of grass-scrub, second-growth birds.
 
The Lincoln’s Sparrow is a tidy, gray-faced bird.

The Clay-colored Sparrow was abundant in North Dakota when we vacationed there two years ago. It is always nice to see and hear this species. When we see them in the fall, few and far between, they are silent.

The Chipping Sparrow is a fan-favorite throughout the US. It is colorful (for a sparrow), perky, and vibrant. They were common throughout Michigan as they are in all of the lower 48 states.

Michigan’s Rare Bird – Kirtland’s Warbler

There are fewer than 1800 male Kirtland’s Warblers in the world. Hopefully, there are about that number of females as well. There have been more than 1600 males for the past three years and the number was as low as 200 males in the 1970’s. This bird is limited to central Michigan’s Jack Pine woodlands for nesting. It has absurdly specific requirements.

Grayling is one of the two towns where Kirtland’s Warblers are pretty much guaranteed. They are a very rare species; breeding almost entirely in the Jack Pines of central Michigan and wintering in the Bahamas. Though that sounds pretty cushy it is a bit of a challenge on the ground. The Jack Pine habitat was managed by natural fires historically and natural fires are frowned on these days. The use of controlled burns is a bit iffy as well, as control and loss-of-control are often only a gust of wind apart. There was a 24,000-acre fire several years ago that changed the management techniques for Jack Pine woodlands. After the Mack Lake Fire the use of mechanical planting has pretty much replaced managed fire as the prime tool for Jack Pine reforestation and management.

Because the areas where Kirtland’s Warblers nest is mostly managed by the US Fish & Wildlife Service access is limited. Thus images are catch-as-catch-can and mine are pretty poor.

The birds forage and nest on the ground under the Jack Pines.
The males tend to sing from the oak trees that are interspersed in the Jack Pine areas. They are a loud and conspicuous bird and quite easy to locate once you are in their very specific habitat.

The birds use young Jack Pine (5-20 years old) for nesting and then abandon the area. They then look for an area that was burned a few years previously and nest there until it grows up. Once the fires stop and the habitat ages the birds are in trouble. This is an easy bird to manage for, however; as long as there is acreage of young pines the birds seem to do fine. The wintering habitat seems to be adequate and the numbers returning each spring seem to be solid. So, if fires are too risky how do they manage the land? It is farmed – tree farmed in a real sense. Mechanical planters insert thousands of small trees in an area and then you wait. It seems to be working quite well.

The US Forest Service, US Fish & Wildlife Service, and the Michigan Audubon Society work together to provide free or inexpensive tours intended to show visitors this bird. The tours are available in either Grayling or Mio. Tours during the four weeks from May 15 to June 15 are pretty much guaranteed to see the birds. Later tours are less likely to see them. The warblers are headed south in late August and by mid-September they have all gone home to the islands.

The towns in this part of the state are aware of the visitation by birders and naturalists and accommodate people well. The hotels are pretty average and there are few restaurants but all in all it is a nice place for a birder to stay a few days.

Starting in Mio there is a 58-mile tour that takes you through very nice habitat for Kirtland’s Warbler (saw and heard several along the road) as well as other (mostly wetland) habitats of the area.

Mio also has a stone and glass monument (this is a 3 foot tall warbler behind glass) in the center of town that acknowledges the bird and the efforts of central Michigan to provide and manage habitat.

The economy may be down throughout Michigan in mid-2011, but the effort is still being made to attract birders to the warbler-towns. The various governmental services have visitor centers as well as tours and the hotels and motels all have handouts on the birds. (This is not an endorsement of the above-depicted establishment.)

There is a previous blog-page on Michigan’s wetlands and there is a following page on the other natural history of Michigan – as usual, mostly bird related.

Michigan’s Wetlands

We just had a week in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. There are Great Lakes all around Michigan; Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan wash the Lower Peninsula with Lake Superior looming above the Upper Peninsula (which is attached to Wisconsin and never touches the Lower Peninsula). In addition, there are many streams, rivers,  lakes, marshes, and bogs. It is just great for mosquitoes, black flies, and birds. The area is a haven for birders (a few), fishermen (a whole lot), hunters (lots in season) and, in the winter, snow-mobilers (again, lots). We were impressed (wrong word?) with the number of road-killed deer we saw; the insurance companies must really dislike deer.

Our trip took us from eastern Massachusetts, out through New York state and into Canada at Niagara Falls (there will be a blog page on this area coming soon) and then across southern Ontario and back into the US at Sarnia/Port Huron. We then headed west and north reaching Grayling, Michigan where we stayed a few days. From there we headed west to the bustling vacation town of Traverse City and then south along Lake Michigan to Grand Haven. From there we headed east by the same roads with stops at Niagara Falls and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.  It was a trip of 2667 miles with lots of dollars spent of petrol – $4.19 a gallon in Michigan and $3.83 in Massachusetts.

Grayling is one of the two towns where Kirtland’s Warblers are pretty much guaranteed. They are a very rare species; breeding in the Jack Pine of central Michigan and wintering in the Bahamas. Though that sounds pretty cushy it is a bit of a challenge on the ground. The Jack Pine habitat was managed by natural fires historically and natural fires are frowned on these days. The use of controlled burns is a bit iffy as well as control and loss-of-control are often only a gust of apart. There was a 24,000 acre fire year ago that changed the management techniques for Jack Pine woodlands. After the Mack Lake Fire the use of mechanical planting has pretty much totally replaced fire as the prime tool for Jack Pine reforestation projects. (There will be a blog page on this area following this page on wetlands.)

Ruddy Ducks are one of the stiff-tails. They are toy-like diving ducks.

Grebes are not ducks and the Pied-billed Grebe is the most widespread the North American Grebes.

In an area that is largely remote and often wet, as is most of rural Michigan, it is nice to see all the grebes, mergansers, ducks, and geese that live there. It is not unusual to see Canada Geese most anywhere in the US these days but there are impressive numbers in Michigan. There are large marshes that hold Bitterns, Pied-billed Grebes, lots of diving and puddle ducks, and an abundance of Great Blue Herons. In addition there are swallows, Black Terns, the occasional Caspian Tern, and a huge biomass of Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds.

While traveling north of Traverse City on the Leelanau Peninsula we bumped in to a large number of migrating birds of prey. There had been no southern air moving north for quite a while and this warm and breezy day was just what they needed. The adult birds had pushed through the early weather but the non-breeding younger birds seemed to have lazed along and were all bunched up mulling over the water-crossing that was ahead of them. We had several hundred Broad-winged Hawks, Bald Eagle, accipiters, and Turkey Vultures soaring above the cherry orchards of the northern part of this peninsula. It was pretty nice. The blurry images below show the crescents in the wings and the split tails on many of the Broad-wings. Young eagles are very dark. The Turkey Vultures were not all young as might be seen by the reddish heads.

The Broad-winged Hawk is a Buteo. It migrates north over the Rio Grande Valley (TX) by the hundreds of thousands in mid-April. We see them in the northern woods 2-5 weeks later. The 10-11 month old birds (last year’s young) are molting as they move north.

Young Bald eagles are ragged also. They are also 3-4 years from the white heads and tails that make them officially grown-up.

The Turkey Vulture is much more common in Massachusetts than it ever has been – but the west and mid-west have many many more than we do.
The fruit orchards of northern Michigan were just finishing setting fruit; but were still very nice.

Northern Right Whales around Cape Cod

As winter wanes in New England the right whales appear*. They are here coincidentally with a bloom of zooplankton that seems unbothered by the still-cold waters. The whales (and the zooplankton) usually appear in March and move on by mid-April. This year there have been a great many Atlantic Right Whales (more than 200 – almost half the world’s population) and they have been very close to shore. The images that I show below are from 22 April. On this outing we had whales right at the Provincetown breakwater and about 65 whales without getting more than half-a-mile from the beach.

The Right Whale is not as showy or active as the Humpbacks that will soon arrive. So, most of the images will be of modest chunks of whale in a dark gray-green ocean.

Right Whales have large growths on the head (and what might be called a neck) called callosities. These are patches of roughened skin inhabited by whale lice or cyamids. The whale lice are very light-colored, hence the whitish look to the callosities. These growths extend a short distance rearward from the head. There is no dorsal fin on the broad back of a right whale. The whalers of the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries referred to this whale as the right whale because it was the right whale to kill. They travel near shore and due to a large percentage of their bodies being blubber, they float when dead. Thus native peoples in small boats were often able to hunt this whale with great success. 
They are surface feeders and simply cruise along the surface taking in the slurry of zooplankton-rich sea water. The zooplankton is captured in the baleen as the water is forced out through the baleen back to the sea. This baleen mustache is licked clean by the tongue and the oceanic pudding swallowed. It seems an unlikely way for a huge animal to feed but that is all they do; really.

                                                        

Right Whales have a large arching mouth; with a narrow upper jaw and a large curving lower jaw. There are about 300 baleen plates that look like a very large and very fuzzy comb. The inside edge of the baleen is fuzzy (think split ends) and can capture very small prey. Using the Google-derived image above imagine the mouth closed so only a small opening exists in the very front. That is how they swim in food-rich waters. The baleen is not all the same length; but much like piano or harp strings they lay together in a harmonious sweep from small to very long; the longest plates of baleen on an adult whale will be about 9′ in length.
They are a rather tubby animal overall. The largest Right Whales can reach 60 feet in length and weigh up to 100 tons. Most of the adult members of the Atlantic population are about 70% of that size; 36-45″ and 50-70 tons. About 40% of the body weight is blubber. 
The flukes and fins (there is no dorsal fin remember) are broad and appear stubby to those who have seen Humpback Whales. The blow from a Right Whale is very much V-shaped and low. The two blowholes are rather widely spaced and large; hence the low, bushy-shaped blow.
The image below shows the small upper jaw completely and the arch of the lower jaw.
The two images below are from a Humpback Whale. The baleen is short and the jaws meet in a flat line, like a toilet bowl and its lid. The longest baleen of a Humpback is rarely 2′ in length. The upper jaw of the Humpback has a flat appearance with large rounded bumps, not callosities. Each of these bumps harbors the whales only hairs; baleen is not hair though it is hairy. Baleen is much more like fingernail than hair. 

There seem to be three distinct populations of Right Whale; the North Atlantic, the North Pacific, and the Southern. Now that DNA can be used as a forensic tool it is believed that these populations have been separated from each other for 3-10 million years and are in fact separate species. They are studied in the same way that the Human Genome has been used by National Geographic to look for genetic markers in humans to help determine when and where ancient relatives moved to and from. 
The three images below are of Southern Right Whales taken off the coast of Argentina a year or so ago near Peninsula Valdes, an area where calves are born. The Southern Right Whale is found all around Antarctica with calving locations northward into the warm waters of New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Madagascar, and South America. The population probably totals 12,000 or so. In looking at the images it is easy to see that the populations share ancestry. It is now a matter of geography that keeps them apart. There is no way to know in what manner an animal from one species would be treated by members of any of the other populations. Perhaps they are still similar enough to recognize each other – perhaps not.

The callosities and blowholes of the Southern Right Whale are very much like those of the other populations/species. They are obviously from the same ancient lineage.
* Actually coastal New England has a late winter that wanes in March and then lingers for another 10 weeks or so without much change or improvement. We have a lot of cool gray weather; influenced by the sea and storms from both the west and the east. In that opening phrase I did not mean to imply springtime with flowers and singing birds. It is merely a time where the precipitation is in drops and not flakes.

Underwater In Australia

There is some redundancy with a late October post about Cairns and the Great Barrier – but this speaks a bit more about the reef and its wildlife.





The Great Barrier Reef is touted as one of the few landmarks on earth that can be seen from space. In fact this remarkable array of atolls, islands, reefs, shoals, and mangroves can be seen from space. The reef consists of more than 2500 islets and reef parts that stretch from New Guinea to the coast off south-central Australia. if you have spent a week diving on the reef you have seen but a tiny fraction of it. The corals, fish, mollusks, and birds make for a most exciting array of life in the warm seas just off shore. 

The reef is about 1600 miles long and has as many as 2,900 reefs and 900 islands associated with it. The reef is in the Coral Sea (appropriately enough) and reaches all the way to Papua, New Guinea. It is a structure that is covered with billions of living architects; each building on the foundations laid by their predecessors. Though the reef has been around for about 25 million years there have been many starts and stops as the continental plate upon which the shallows ride has moved considerably – sometimes to a place favorable to coral growth and sometimes to place not favorable. The current reef creatures probably have an ancestry dating back about 20,000 years though they are building on a previous reef from about 600,000 years ago. The sea has risen almost 400 feet in the that time and the coral has grown with it. Coral reefs can grow upward about 10 inches a year if circumstances demand it.

The reefs are constantly growing, breaking, and being relocated. The coral is hard but not permanent. Fragments are created by fish, storm action, and changes in water chemistry. The bits and pieces are then washed about by the sea. At some point they begin to accumulate and form a shoal/ Eventually the shoal is visible above the sea and then come the steps that make it a real island; the adding of more material, a harding of the particles, the arrival of birds, and the arrival of vegetation. This evolution is not always step by step as a storm can scatter the materials erasing all signs of a once-promising island.

There are about 600 types of corals in the Barrier reef System. Most are hard corals but there are many kinds of soft coral as well. The fishes run to about 1500 species and there are about 125 species of sharks. The little things are also of interest; the Box Jelly is a smallish jelly with very poisonous tentacles. There are also octopi, cone shells, and a few fish that harbor toxins. But contact with any of these is very unlikely. 

triggerfish

coral symphony

giant clam amongst corals – this species can grow to be about four feet in length 
and about three feet vertically

The birds are an important part of the reef. their droppings, when mixed with the calcium products piled by the sea, provide the chemicals to form the hardpan that seals the islands and allows them to hold fresh water. These fresh water areas are then suitable for the arrival of plants. So the transition from broken coral to part of a vegetated island is rather long and involved.


The two main species of terns out on these islands are the Brown Noddy (above) and the Sooty Tern (below). The populations of these two are augmented by Crested and Lesser crested Terns, a few Silver Gulls, and the occasional Brown Booby. Many of the nesting islands will harbor 5-10,000 pairs of sooties and noddies. These are birds that only come to land to nest; otherwise they are pelagic.


The bird below looks a great deal like the Sooty Tern. The Bridled Tern has a longer white stripe at the eye and a more charcoal plumage. they are few and far between in the reef but they are always a treat to see.






Reptiles of the Galapagos

Reptiles of the Galapagos Islands


There are many iconic creatures of the Galapagos Islands are reptiles. Certainly the Marine Iguana and the tortoises are among these island icons. Of course, there are also the boobies and the Waved Albatross and the energetic and good-tempered sea lions. But the slow moving reptiles are always well represented in the photographs of visitors. They pose and pose and pose.
Here we will take a look at the reptiles of the islands. It is little surprise that birds and reptiles make up a large part of the biomass of these remote islands. Birds arrived on the islands by chance because they could fly and reptiles arrived because their metabolism slows down and as they are occasional feeders were able to withstand the long (and fortuitous) journey by sea to the islands. There are four sorts of snakes on the islands, three species of iguana, six endemic species of geckos, and seven species of lava lizards. And, one species of tortoise in many guises. I will ignore the snakes and geckos for now; the following deals with iguanas, Lava Lizards, and tortoises.
 
The tortoises vary in appearance. The shells of those residing on islands where the vegetation has a tree-like form have a notch in the upper shell so they can extend their long necks upward. Those from lush(er) islands where vegetation is found rather easily at your feet have domed shells without a notch. Most herpetologists list 14 forms of tortoise in the Galapagos. Three forms are extinct and have been since they were gathered for food by pirates, buccaneers, whalers, and sealers back in the 18th and 19th centuries. Taxonomically there is only one species; with two major morphs (shapes: domed and saddle); with (originally) 14 varieties or forms. Each type is restricted to a specific island and a specific habitat on the island. Some islands do have more than one form, but each population is restricted to a specific bit of geography.
The domed shell is rather even throughout its circumference. The bearers of these shells have shorter necks and easier pickings than do the saddle-backed tortoises.

The saddle-backed tortoise shell allows for a longer neck to reach out and up to obtain food that is not at ground level. Much of the food these tortoise go after is a tree-like Opuntia cactus. The Spanish word for saddle is the base for the word Galapagos. Spanish saddles have a cantle board and look much like the tortoise shell shown in the image above.

Male tortoise are much larger than females. Though they are usually silent and occasionally hiss, during mating the male can be heard at some distance.
There are two types of iguana that visitors usually see; the ubiquitous Marine Iguana and the much less common land iguana. There is a third species, another land iguana, that is restricted to a very small home range and is not seen by visitors. The Land Iguana is a large, colorful, and hulking lizard where the marine iguana is smaller, darker, and very common. 
During the times of feral cats, dogs, goats, burros, and rats the iguanas were decimated. Their eggs were dug and eaten, the young were also a regular food source, and there was little chance of hiding from the predation. During the past couple decades there have been exceptional efforts to remove cats, dogs, and goats from some (now many) of the islands. In many cases the eradication of invasive and alien species has been nearly completed. On the islands where this change has occurred the land iguanas are now able to hold their own and are beginning to repopulate. 
On this last visit we saw one young Land Iguana, a first for many of the professional guides. Sadly, there was a feral cat seen within fifty yards of where this youngster was sunning.

Opuntia cactus is an important food plant where it is found. In addition to the tortoises and iguanas there are finches that eat the seeds, the flowers, and the fruit. In fact much of the pollination is carried out by cactus finches.
Land Iguanas are heavy-looking and rather colorful creatures. They burrow into the tuff hillsides and spend their day in pursuit of Opuntia cactus pads – spines and all. Like many animals in warm climates with long life spans they are not frenetic breeders and their recovery from the impact of feral domestic animals is a slow process.  

The Marine Iguanas are much more common than the land iguanas. They are purely coastal creatures. They feed on marine algae, usually eating while underwater; though they will graze on the algae on rocks exposed at low tide. Their bodies cool significantly in the water and then spend a good deal of the day sunning, often in a pile of their brethren.

Though there are color and size differences between the various populations of Marine Iguana they are considered to be one species; though there are seven sub-species. They are able to isolate the salt from their diet and eject it in short, but rather violent, bursts from their nostrils. Males will compete with other males for dominance in an area by walking about and head-shaking. These action draw the attention of others and then displays the vigor of the displaying male.
Because the islands are so young and so volcanic there are few beaches of sand. On the older islands there are some sand beaches and on other islands there are beaches of crushed urchin spines, small pebbles, and other fragments. Thus, nesting sites for marine iguanas are few and far between. This lack of suitable nesting habitat seems to be the most limiting factor that they face. In a place without predators limitations are met and overcome by longevity, persistence, specialization, and of course (how Darwinian) evolution.
The last of the common and easily seen reptiles is the Lava Lizard. Compared to the tortoises and iguanas this small lizard is a bit of an after thought. It is a creature of the shrubby inlands though it occurs in vegetation right down to the shore. The males are mottled with a rough skin, a red throat, and a dorsal crest. An adult female will have smoother skin, be smaller than the male, and have a red or orange throat. The top image below is a male and the lower image is a female.

The male lava lizard is rougher in appearance than the female. Like most of the animals of the Galapagos populations are often specific to certain islands. In the case of the lava lizards there is one fairly widespread species and six other species that are island-specific.

The Galapagos Islands – #1

This was to the first blog – but I finished the oceanic-bird page first – so this is second.

Over the next ten days I will be posting blogs from several islands in the Galapagos chain. This posting will set the geologic tone for the rest of the posts. The Galapagos are not lush and green like most equatorial sites. They are often bare and rocky, sparsely vegetated, and surfaced by what look like fresh lava flows. The plants and animals of the Galapagos are actually quite limited in diversity and many of the organisms have adapted to the archipelago or to an individual island.

Charles Darwin was here in the Galapagos Islands aboard the HMS Beagle in 1835. He was ashore for short bits of time while the Beagle crew surveyed and charted the islands as part of their mission. The ship was in the islands for only thirty days and Darwin was ashore for barely one-third of that time. The most surprising tidbit about Darwin’s time in the Galapagos is that he arrived here in the 45th month of the voyage. This was by no means a trip to the Galapagos, nor were the islands a real feature of the Beagle’s itinerary.

Though the Galapagos and Darwin are knitted together in today’s thinking, there are many other factors that stimulated Darwin regarding the development of species and many other places that had a more significant impact than did these remote islands. He had already seen fossils that looked like creatures he was familiar with and experienced and earthquake that lifted the city of Concepcion, Chile about nine feet. These observations had opened his mind to the possibility that the earth was changeable and had changed in the past. However the continued work of David Lack and Peter & Rosemary Grant and their studies of the wonderful biologic array presented by the finches of the Galapagos have elevated the islands to an iconic evolutionary position.

This spire is a remnant of a tuff cone that once formed the circular rim of a mostly eroded crater.

If Darwin had realized what the Galapagos really had to offer he most likely would have focused on the variation between similar animals that obviously share ancestry. There are land snails that speak better to the development of species than do the finches. The mockingbirds do the same; as do lava lizards and many other creatures. He was aware of, but did not study, the shell-shape differences that can be seen in tortoises from different islands. As a matter of fact the Beagle took about 50 tortoises on board for food and ate them all as they traveled and Darwin did not save a single shell. He thought (regretfully) about the finches and tortoises on many occasions after returning to England.

Geologically the islands are a continuing cycle of creation and destruction. The lava builds upward and eventually rises above the surface of the Pacific from a hot-spot deep in the earth. The tectonic plate moves to the east a few inches a year, slowly-but-surely leaving the hot-spot behind. Over time the islands cease building and the ocean begins to erode the islands until they disappear below the sea. The oldest island that we see here is about four million years old and the youngest about 700,000 years.

However, the islands have been building and eroding here for about seventy million years; hence there are dozens of old islands beneath the sea to the east of the existing archipelago. The young islands are often barren lava-covered specks in the sea. However, if the islands build high enough they can collect clouds and soon become moist. The plants move in faster in the higher moister areas and soon pockets of soil develop and these larger islands become vegetated. Those islands in rain-shadows or without elevation usually remain dry and rocky – sometimes for tens of thousands of years.

Lava floes that harden with a ropy appearance are called pahoehoe; those lava floes that harden with sharp breaks like broken glass are called aa. Both names are from the Hawaiian terms give to the lavas.
Pahoehoe forms when a rather liquid lava flows and the surface cools and skins over. Think of pouring hot, liquid candle wax down a sloped board and ponder how it would look as the flow cooled. Then imagine what would happen if more lava came, or less, and so on. 
 Evidence of volcanic (and plate) action are everywhere in the world in some form or another. The Galapagos offer a chance to wander through a living textbook on volcanism. This is an image of Daphne Island.

The earth’s crust as we see it is a series of floating plates that are buoyed up by the hot magma of the inner earth. These plates often move; creating trenches, undersea volcanic troughs, and mountain ranges where they collide with another plates (like the Andes to the east of the Galapagos). The older islands have eroded and traveled with the plate eastward. Volcanic activity still occurs in the islands; in the region of a “hot spot”. This spot is a plume of magma that extends upward from the earth with such heat that it continually melts through the plate at the same spot. The plate moves and the islands form in a row like the (inverse) of dripping pancake batter from a spoon on the way to the griddle.

There are layers of ash, tuff, and lava all over the Galapagos. They are young and the geology is like an open book. There are places where lava flowed over land and where it exploded from under the sea. Scoria, lava tubes, tuff, calderas, cinder cones, pit craters and aa and pahoehoe flows, are all there to be seen and understood. It is a remarkable place for its geology as much as for its animal forms.

There are many many small islets and only a few more than a dozen larger islands out here. The Galapagos are 600 miles west of the Ecuadorian coast; they are remote, stark, beautiful, stark, barren, lush, and haunting; they remain in your mind well after you depart their rugged shores.