Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir (12 page)

Every day we had sun and heat and every day we had mist and rain. It was fantastically beautiful. We snorkelled at the base of a cliff and into a grotto where a Galapagos fur seal came to play. Jorge dove with the seal and they swam together in loops, the rest of us watching, legs dangling in the greeny-gloom of the cave. Thomas took over when Jorge surfaced and when the boy came up for air he was laughing. The seal nudged him and down they went again.

The two
pangas
, as they called the Zodiac boats, took us over to the islands for some sightseeing. The sights were all natural: birds, iguanas, giant red crabs, and tortoises. On our first full day we went to Tower Island, where we saw the famous boobies. We saw all three kinds:
blue-footed
,
red-footed
, and
Nazca
. We saw
baby boobies
, little balls of white fluff perched in a thorny tree. We saw red-footed boobies doing a mating dance. We saw a young blue-footed booby sitting beside a signpost low to the ground. The sign was white with an arrow painted in booby-blue, pointing along the path. This was the only sign we saw on this island and I guess that baby booby found it companionable.

The astonishment was that the wildlife was so tame. Telephoto lenses were unnecessary; we could crouch down and snap a photo from a metre away. For many generations these animals had had nothing to fear from humans and were, therefore, not afraid. We approached, they remained.

I thought of the great blue heron that liked to stand on the end of the canoe dock at the cottage. It would watch me carefully as I inched closer and closer, as slowly as I could, taking forever. I sent it clear and loving vibrations but no matter, once I came within four metres, it flew away. I wished it could see these boobies, calm as can be. Or even the great blue herons on the beach in Florida that will blithely walk a crowded beach and try to steal from a fisherman’s pail. Yeats reminded me that the great blues do come to the Galapagos, and he was right. We’d already seen some in Guayaquil, but they weren’t the ones that migrate to Muskoka and stand waiting for frogs on the end of our dock.

On the same island we saw more magnificent frigate birds, the males with their huge red neck pouches extended in courtship. They, too, were unafraid, and were so glorious that some of us took far too many photographs.

Yeats said, “Do we really need more than, say, two good photos of one kind of bird? Do we? Do we really, Mom?”

“Some people obviously think so. They can do what they like.”

“But it’s so dumb. They could be enjoying the birds.”

“They are, in their own way. Plus, they’re enjoying taking pictures. Some people love to take pictures. It’s an art.”

“Fifty pictures of the same bird isn’t an art form. It’s craziness.”

I secretly agreed, but Yeats could be so adamant. I didn’t want him to grow up to be harshly judgmental, so I tried to temper his rants.

“They’re looking for the perfect picture. That’s all.”

“There’s no such thing. Or, every picture is perfect.”

I stared at him for a second then went to look at another bird.

Some of the male frigate birds looked like they were suffocating, their neck pouches were so large. They spread their long black wings out to the sides like cormorants on a perch, staying put in spite of our stares.

When we finally tore our eyes away and looked behind us at the view, we saw a cloud of birds flying just off the island’s rocky coast. Jorge said they were two kinds of storm petrels:
Galapagos
and
white-rumped
. There must have been a couple thousand individuals in that flock, and we watched, enthralled, as they circled and swooped and circled again.

Lauren said, “Why don’t they crash into each other?” and some adult began an explanation. But truly, this was one of the mysteries. To be reminded of life’s mysteries was a delicious gift and I moved away so as not to hear the scientific explanation. I glanced at Lauren, who was looking perplexed by the account, but I knew she wouldn’t have been happy with “It’s magic,” either.

EVERY DAY JORGE TOOK
us out in the
pangas
. One afternoon, near Isabela Island, we donned our rain jackets over our shorts and T-shirts and loaded into the two small boats. We sat up along the high rubber sides, eight to a boat, plus a driver.

It was drizzling, misty in the distance. High cliffs of reddish-yellow stone were the main feature of this side of Isabela. Small caves were dotted here and there in the cliffs, and many ledges were full of perching birds. We saw more blue-footed boobies, gulls, and a kind of tern called the
brown noddy
. It was love at first sight for me. Like all terns, this one had a small, sleek body and an arrow-straight bill. Its feathers were dark brown with light brown around the head. I don’t know why these birds captured my heart; there is no logic to love. As we sat bobbing in our boats, my eyes were glued to the noddies and I had a feeling I had a silly smile on my face. I kept saying to Ben, “Will you look at those birds. Aren’t they so beautiful?”

I also have a love of sparrows. A friend of mine once asked why I bothered looking at sparrows, saying, “Aren’t they the most boring bird ever?” I was aghast at his lack of knowledge, and then at myself for being such a birding snob. “Clearly,” I said, “you don’t know about sparrows. How about the
white-crowned sparrow
with the black and white stripes on its head? Or the
white-throated sparrow
with the yellow eye patches that sings,
Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada
? Or the song sparrow with its chest stripes and beautiful song?”

He looked at me with chagrin and said, “You mean there’s more than one kind of sparrow?”

We continued touring Isabela and saw what looked like prehistoric rock paintings, but they must have been a natural phenomenon. There is no known history of indigenous people in the Galapagos and besides, who would climb all the way up there to carve curlicues in the cliff? These decorated rocks were mesmerizing, in any case, and people snapped photo after photo, despite the rain and terrible light.

Someone saw a spotted eagle ray in the water, and we spent half an hour trying to get a good look at it. The two
pangas
chased and circled the poor creature and the two groups of people took photos of the others trying to take photos of the ray. It never rose completely out of the water, but we saw its “wings” flapping the surface and its form hovering just beneath. It was huge and exotic, mythical.

All the movement and wave action lulled little Fiona to sleep and she dropped against me. I held her up with one arm and clung to Ben with the other while making sure my feet were well planted on the bottom of the boat. Fiona’s parents were in the other
panga
and looked over anxiously from time to time. I smiled at them; I wouldn’t let her fall into the ocean.

The
panga
drivers signalled to one another and the two boats raced each other back to the
Alta
. By this time, Fiona was wide awake. Jorge told us to crowd up close to the bow to make us go faster. He wanted to win. Ron was sitting right at the bow and he looked quite pleased to have Laurie, Jane, Meredith, and me suddenly piled on top of him. We were laughing so hard we didn’t care who won the race, it was just so much fun to be doing something silly in the rain. Then I heard Jorge yell to Fiona that there would be hot chocolate waiting for us on the boat.

On one of our
panga
rides we saw a group of
Galapagos penguins
sunning themselves on rocks next to some Galapagos sea lions. The Galapagos are the smallest penguins, with an average weight of less than
2
.
5
kilograms. They are the only penguins with no particular breeding season and have been known to breed up to three times a year. This is in adaptation to an unreliable food source — when food is abundant, they breed more often and sometimes, when food is scarce, they produce no young at all. They are at the mercy of ocean currents as well as weather patterns such as El Niño, all highly variable in the Galapagos.

We watched them slide off the rocks headfirst, like children in a water park, and swim under water. We saw them swimming while we snorkelled. They looked like fat fish, except that they flapped their wings to move themselves through the water. At first, I found it disconcerting to see a bird swimming. One time I saw a
common loon
swimming at the cottage, but I’d been standing on the dock and it was underwater, distorted by the waves. This time,
I
was underwater too, watching these birds swim past. If I’d thought about it before I would have been blasé at the prospect of seeing a penguin swim, but in the moment I was astonished. It took my breath away.

Another day we spent some time on Isabela Island to see the giant tortoises and the yellow land iguanas. Here we also saw some of
Darwin’s finches
. Not even Jorge could tell them apart without spending time comparing them to one another and to the photos in his guidebook. The differences between the fifteen varieties were pretty small, mostly to do with size and shape of beak. We didn’t bother trying to identify them, just checked “Darwin’s finch” off our lists and carried on. We also saw yellow mangrove warblers, small yellow passerines with rust-coloured faces.

We stopped at Fernandina Island and disembarked from the
pangas
onto black lava rocks, which were covered in black marine iguanas and thousands of colourful Sally Lightfoot crabs. It was very hot in this place and I sensed that some of the group were restless, but still we paused to watch blue-footed boobies diving for fish off a rocky promontory. Jorge told us that they kept their mouths shut until they were under water, when they scooped up the fish. If they left their mouths open, the force of the water hitting the backs of their throats would make them explode. It reminded me of the pelicans we’d watched diving for fish in Florida, but these boobies were much more graceful, being smaller and more streamlined. They tucked their wings along their bodies and looked like racing arrows as they plunged into the sea. Five or six of them dove at once in nearly the same place, then another three hit the water soon after. It looked like choreographed manoeuvres, a boobie air show.

WE WERE OFF TO
Bartholomew Island to watch the sunrise. It was a climb of about half an hour to the top of the island, which is small and rocky. Just about anyone who has looked through photos of the Galapagos would recognize this place, with its rock tower jutting up from the ocean and its perfectly circular bay. A couple of large cruise ships had anchored there. They looked huge next to the
Alta
and we were glad all those people weren’t joining us on our sunrise trek.

We saw no birds on Bartholomew. There were no trees, and nothing for animals of any kind to eat except for a few scrubby bushes here and there. It was amazing to us how different these islands were from one another. We had breakfast back on board the boat and set off on a fairly long trip to re-fuel on another island, Baltra.

Hours later we disembarked on a lovely beach, the first one we’d seen where tourists were allowed to hang out. All the other beaches we’d been to had been protected for the sake of the wildlife. We carried water and juice and beer with us. We wore our swimsuits and brought along a Frisbee and soccer ball. The women sat with bottles of beer at the water’s edge, all in a line, and David snapped a photo. We laughed and then posed for him, smiling and hamming it up like beach babes. We were having fun. A game of catch started up in the water with the soccer ball and quickly turned into a team sport complete with goaltenders and a scoreboard.

Ben and I wandered away from this competitive activity and found a couple of birds. Yeats joined us for a while and told us what they were:
lava gulls
,
laughing gulls
, and
sanderlings
. Then he joined the game while Ben and I took a quiet moment to ourselves farther down the beach. It was lovely and peaceful. The water was warm. We were in the tropics.

Ben said, “We could do this. We could take a Caribbean holiday one time.”

It was a miracle! Maybe he was developing a travel bug at last.

We wandered back to watch the game, but by then most people had stopped playing. Apparently the ball had a small hole in it, so every time it landed in the ocean, it took on a bit more water, until finally it was too heavy for most people to throw. Yeats, Thomas, and Jorge were the only three left at the end and they played a game of Monkey in the Middle while everyone else had something to drink.

The
Alta
was full of fuel and ready for the long journey around the island of Santa Cruz and into Puerto Ayora. Back on board, most of us showered and got dressed for dinner. Laurie and I were teased for wearing linen trousers with long, loose tops because most of the others were in shorts and T-shirts. My sister and I were a bit too chic.

The grown-ups went up to the top deck for sundowners and the sunset. Fernando brought us popcorn and we lolled about happily after a day of exercise and fun. The sun set promptly at six o’clock, after which we went down into the lounge to hear about the next day’s itinerary. The wind had picked up during sunset, and now the waves were starting to rock the boat uncomfortably. I went downstairs to take a Gravol and lie on the bed for a minute.

Then we hit the reef.

The boat made a horrible grinding noise and then pitched to starboard. I sat up. The noise was right underneath me, so I had a pretty good idea right away that we’d hit something.

The boat stopped but made the noise again, several times. That was apparently when the skipper tried to back up, off the reef, to no avail. The boat lurched again, this time to port, and I got off the bed and hurried upstairs.

Everyone was on their feet in the lounge. Jorge was shouting for one person per cabin to go downstairs and fetch the life jackets and their passports. I looked across the room at Yeats who mouthed, “It’s okay.” I guess I looked worried. I
was
worried. I wanted Yeats and Ben right beside me, but there was no chance of that.