This morning, we visited North Seymour Island. Since this was primarily a visit to a bird island, they had us get up and out so we arrived at the island by 6:20am. This was so we would see more of the birds before the adults took off to hunt for food.

It was a flat island that was home to many, many birds making their nests. We saw a lot of Frigate and Blue Footed Booby chicks! The Frigates nest in the scrubby trees, while the Blue Footed Boobies nest on the ground.

Male Frigates have red pouches that they puff up to display. The red is quite a contrast to their black feathers. This guy was just hanging out, hoping to attract a female.

Although they are “sea birds”, Frigates cannot go into the water to catch fish because their feathers are not waterproof. They need to grab a fish from above the water or – their preferred method – wait and steal fish from other birds. They will also eat young iguanas, turtles and chicks. Basically, anything they can steal or kill. That makes them the mean birds compared to all the others we saw.

However, they are magnificent in flight! Their wings can span over 7 feet. Perhaps not surprisingly, the two species of Frigate birds we saw here were named the Great and Magnificent Frigate bird. 🙂

I can’t figure out in our pictures which males are Great vs Magnificent because it’s just a different color of sheen to their feathers that tells them apart. For the females, it’s obvious because the Magnificent female has a white neck and chest area.

Here are two males near a chick. It was amazing how they would all crowd together, with many birds and nests in the same shrubby tree.

We also saw a lot of Blue Boobies and their chicks. They were all over the place, right next to – and in – the trail. This chick was standing in our trail. He didn’t care at all when we walked past him. I’m guessing his original nest was to the right, behind the “stop” sign, where all the white poop is built up.

Another chick on our trail. Hard to believe this chick will eventually have blue feet!

Of course, there were adults everywhere, too. This one held a great pose for photos! You can really see his blue feet and other markings.

Ah, a younger and fluffier chick!

We thought that fluffy look would be the youngest we’d see. But no! We saw a chick just fresh out of his egg. There was even still an egg in the nest waiting to hatch. Here is the chick, egg and proud Mom and Dad…

You can see that the nests are just a small, dug-out indent in the ground. Of course, with the obligatory white poop everywhere around it!

Here is a video with more of a view of the chick.

It’s interesting how the ages of the chicks varied so much. From the youngest just out of the egg, to fluffy birds, to this one below, who is much older.

While they are young, they start practicing their flight movements.

While we were fascinated by all the Booby chicks, we just had to look again at the scrubby trees to see plenty of Frigate birds.

And, here’s a young Frigate chick up in his nest.

Sadly, not all chicks will have the best life. This was a scene we saw at a Booby nest where the older (bigger) chick beat up the smaller chick until he had to leave the area to escape. It’s not gruesome or anything, just interesting to see what happens in this video…

Well, I could show you even more Frigate and Blue Footed Booby pictures, but I think you get the idea! 🙂

As usual, we saw a good number of lava lizards, too.

Every so often, we’d see some of these flowers in bloom.

After a while, our trail led us towards a beach area. On the rocks, there were some marine iguanas resting.

There didn’t seem to be many out on the rocks. But when you looked around, you could see plenty of wavy trails left by the iguanas as they crossed the sand between the rocks and bushes. So who knows how many were still in the bushes?

This was a cool rock on the beach.

I thought I took a neat picture, and then Monica (our guide) took really cool pictures of us through the rock! It looks like a fake frame added to a photo – LOL!

Scattered around the beach area, we saw sea lions. Some were on the sand, but a number of them were resting on the ground cover near the beach.

This little guy was cute…

And this mom had two babies nursing from her!

Amongst the rocks, we saw a pair of Swallow Tailed Gulls with their chick. They use cubby holes in the rocks as their nesting areas. This little guy was peeking around at the world.

And here is a closer picture of the little chick…

So ended a fantastic morning at North Seymour Island!

Next, we’ll be snorkeling.