Española Island
After close encounters with blue-footed boobies and marine iguanas, we walked around a salt bush and faced something that can’t actually be described as beautiful, but that was, by all means, a fascinating sight. Next to the trail of Punta Suarez, Española Island, there was a Galápagos hawk, a juvenile, with a fresh catch at its feet. It looked as if this was one of his first hunts and it seemed that this young top predator was uncertain about what to do next. The victim had been a juvenile blue-footed booby, an easy prey for a hawk-in-training, as the booby couldn’t fly yet and had probably been peacefully resting on the ground. The hawk looked at us, looked at its prey, and then, in one strike, took its head off and ate it. There was blood of course, some of the guests cried out, but we were all quite aware of the uniqueness of the moment, and of how privileged we had been.
Then we saw albatrosses, booby chicks, and in the afternoon many fish, sea lions and sea stars. But the image of today’s morning will be in my mind for a while, the top predator, a juvenile one, hunting and devouring its prey in front of human beings.
After close encounters with blue-footed boobies and marine iguanas, we walked around a salt bush and faced something that can’t actually be described as beautiful, but that was, by all means, a fascinating sight. Next to the trail of Punta Suarez, Española Island, there was a Galápagos hawk, a juvenile, with a fresh catch at its feet. It looked as if this was one of his first hunts and it seemed that this young top predator was uncertain about what to do next. The victim had been a juvenile blue-footed booby, an easy prey for a hawk-in-training, as the booby couldn’t fly yet and had probably been peacefully resting on the ground. The hawk looked at us, looked at its prey, and then, in one strike, took its head off and ate it. There was blood of course, some of the guests cried out, but we were all quite aware of the uniqueness of the moment, and of how privileged we had been.
Then we saw albatrosses, booby chicks, and in the afternoon many fish, sea lions and sea stars. But the image of today’s morning will be in my mind for a while, the top predator, a juvenile one, hunting and devouring its prey in front of human beings.
