Galapagos Arrival

Well, I’m here. It is still surreal. I would say that Jen (my labmate who I am down here with) described the field work perfectly… but I’ll get to that later.

We flew from SLC to Houston to Quito, spent the night in Quito, then flew to Santa Cruz, Galapagos the next day. Everything went surprisingly well besides ripping a huge hole in the crotch of my pants and Jen yelling out “the bomb made it!” at the Quito airport. Our dry shipper for our sample also receives many questions. I need to learn how to say samples in Spanish.

The first few days were spent figuring out our housing arrangements and speaking with all the park people. We landed a fantastic deal on a dorm at the Charles Darwin Research Station. We are well-equipped with a portable oven, coffee maker (coffee here is not good) and a balcony with a view of the partial ocean (more just the boats). Because Jen has been here for the past few seasons she brought a hammock.

After 3 days we decided to venture into the field. Our field site is near the beach on Santa Cruz in an arid zone. Needless to say it is HOT, dry, and full of cacti and other thorny plants.

We are working at the same field site as another crew and have self-titled ourselves “Team Pinzon” (Finch). Luis is just finishing his PhD at Montreal, Jaime just finished his PhD at UCLA and Joost is from Belgium and works on fish. All three of these guys make life here so much easier! Jen is my lab mate from Uni of Utah and there are few people that I would rather spend my time here with (in and out of the field).

Our taxi to the field site (a truck named “Conan”) picks us up at 5am and we arrive at our field site by 5:30. We blindly stumble through lava rock to get to our camp for the day (the sun rises at about 6). We set up nets or check nests for eggs or look for more nests and by 9am it’s between 90-100 degrees. Gnats swarm our heads and wounds from thorny scratches and head. Mosquitoes bite any exposed skin. I love field work!

This is a list of birds we’ve caught:

Medium ground finch (my study species)
Small ground finch
Large ground finch
Vegetarian ground finch
Warbler finch
Small tree finch
Cactus finch
Woodpecker finch
Galapagos mockingbird (everywhere)
Galapagos flycatcher
Wimbrel

Birds we’ve seen:

Galapagos rail
Magnificent frigatebird
Brown pelican
Blue-footed booby
Galapagos dove
Brown noddy
Greater flamingo
Black-necked stilt
Blue-winged teal

I haven’t had a lot of time to go birding, although the diversity isn’t very high. Therefore, we see most of the birds at some point.

There are lava lizards and marine iguanas everywhere.

Bees are the size of a quarter and sting… I know by experience.