North Seymour island is a small flat island north of Baltra and Santa Cruz islands. It hosts one of the largest populations of magnificent frigate birds as well as blue-footed boobies and other birds. There is a trail around the nesting site of the birds and the island is a very popular day trip destination (it is uninhabited by humans). We visited as a stop on our liveaboard trip. The tours are well organized and arrivals of groups are staggered to never to have too many people at the same time. Every group must have a park naturalist guide who are very knowledgeable and really help to better understand the life of birds and animals.
We got to see male frigate birds mating displays when they inflate their pouch, spread wings, and do a little dance to attract females. The picture below has two males doing the display and a female bird deciding if she like either of them.
Once female picks a male, the pouch gets deflated and they nest together – below.
We saw only a couple of blue footed boobies and they at the time were not doing their mating dance. It was still got to observe them up close.
North Seymour island has land iguanas that were introduced from Baltra in 1930s and have successfully settled in. We saw quite a few roaming around the bushes and on the rocks near the sea.
We also saw the usual suspects – crabs and sea lions on the shores of the island. It was a great stop to see so many birds close up and with that we headed for our diving liveaboard adventure.
