Birding

Galapagos Seabirds – Part One

June 1, 2025 by Clive Finlayson No Comments

The Galapagos Islands, some 600 km off the Pacific coast of Ecuador, are best known for the species that Charles Darwin took a special note of and which helped him in the formulation of his ideas of evolution by natural selection. Darwin’s finches are high on this list as are the giant tortoises, the marine and the land iguanas. From the perspective of a birder or ornithologist, the seabirds which inhabit these islands are also of great interest. For the bird photographer, the opportunities are ceaseless.

Galapagos Penguin

The first bizarre encounter up here, right on the Equator, are the penguins. Galapagos Penguins (Spheniscus mendiculus) are a small species and their main breeding sites are in the west, particularly the islands of Isabela and Fernandina, where the cold Cromwell current provides rich pickings for these birds. It is really strange to see penguins up here, venturing even into mangrove lakes where they swim among sharks and rays!

Galapagos Penguin under water (Courtesy Geraldine Finlayson)
Waved Albatross on egg

An albatross also reaches these islands – the Waved Albatross (Phoebastria irrorata) only breeds on the southern island of Española and makes use of the cold Humboldt Current. This island is favoured for nesting as it is flat-topped, providing ideal runway conditions for take-off.

Waved Albatross
Galapagos Shearwaters arriving at nesting colony

Some seabirds are widespread and present in very large numbers. This is the case of the Galapagos Shearwater (Puffinus subalaris). Used to our own North Atlantic and Mediterranean shearwaters, with their nocturnal habits when approaching the nests sites, I was thrown aback with the behaviour of these shearwaters. Even in broad daylight, they would come up to the nesting cliffs and enter the nests in full view of photographer and avian predators.

Galapagos Shearwater

Elliot’s Storm Petrel

But when talking of seabirds in large numbers everywhere, it is the tiny Elliot’s (or White-vented) Storm Petrel (Oceanites gracilis galapagoensis) that steals the show. No further need for pelagics – these storm petrels are everywhere, even inside coastal lagoons and harbours. They follow boats and are very obliging when it comes to photographic opportunities.

Elliot’s Storm Petrel
Flightless Cormorant

I conclude this first part with another endemic seabird, the Flightless Cormorant (Nannopterum harrisi). Like the penguin, its distribution is closely linked to the Cromwell Current, and you can only find it along the western coast of Isabela and all around Fernandina.

Flightless Cormorant


Written by Clive Finlayson
Growing up in Gibraltar, it is impossible not to notice large birds of prey, in the thousands, overhead. That, and his father’s influence, got Clive hooked on birds from a very young age. His passion for birds took him eventually to the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at Oxford University where he read for a DPhil, working with swifts and pallid swifts. Publishing papers, articles and books on birds aside, Clive is also a keen bird photographer. He started as a poor student with an old Zenit camera and a 400 mm lens; nowadays he works with a Nikon mirrorless system. Although his back garden is Gibraltar and the Strait of Gibraltar, Clive has an intimate knowledge of Iberian birds but his work also takes him much further afield, from Canada to Japan to Australia. He is Director of the Gibraltar National Museum. Clive's beat is "Avian Survivors", the title of one of his books in which he describes the birds of the Palaearctic as survivors that pulled through a number of ice ages to reach us today.