Isla Pajaros: Island of the Tropicbirds (and boobies)

One morning in Bocas, instead of going out to do fieldwork, we went on an excursion to Isla Pajaros, home to Red-billed Tropicbirds (Phaethon aethereus) and Brown Boobies (Sula leucogaster).

This part of the island was the domain of the boobies...

Apparently when they are breeding or about to breed, their beaks turn blue. You can sort of see this on the rightmost one here...

And then there are the spectacular tropicbirds...

They have these extremely elongated tail feathers which seem to be a sexually-selected trait serving no other purpose. They certainly look funny in flight curving up and down behind...

And from below, you can see the two tail feathers...

The tropicbirds nest in the crevices on the cliffs of the island.Something about the way they landed struck me as particularly funny. I don't know if it's because of the ridiculously long tail, but they sort of hover with their tail splayed before plopping down into a hole in the cliff.

After sitting and taking pictures of the birds, we jumped out of the boats and snorkeled for a while. We swam through this sea arch...

And around the reef area where there was an octopus! It looked rather like a ball of algae, but hopped along the bottom, reminding me of a rabbit.

When we got back into the boats, we drove around to the other side of the island...

The other side of the sea arches.

Which was more exposed to the waves.

And then we snorkeled and collected data in the afternoon! The next day we took a detour on our way to our field site to visit Dolphin Bay where a pod of dolphins lives.

That pretty much wraps up the coral reefs course. We're back in Gamboa now and onto "Precolumbian Peoples of Tropical America and Their Environments."