Blue-footed Boobies, Galapagos Islands

Travel story extract from Is No Problem:
"...As soon as we had settled into our cabins we returned ashore for our first taste of Galapagos wildlife. We joined one of the most rickety buses I have ever experienced to visit a piece of shoreline just outside the town. Unfortunately, light was beginning to fade, though we did manage to see enough wildlife to give us an exciting taster of what lay ahead. In the harbour surrounding ‘Eric’ we were amused to see sea lions climbing aboard moored boats, on which they would lounge. We walked through scrubby, spiny vegetation which included a number of mangrove bushes, to a typical beach of black, volcanic sand. As we walked along, lazing sea lions would grunt and occasionally show slight aggression to us if we strayed too close. At no time would they make any attempt to get out of our way.
During the walk we saw a few good birds including Blue-footed Boobies, a wader called a Wandering Tattler and, flying between the boats in the harbour, a number of Elliot's Storm-petrels. We also saw our first Galapagos endemic bird in the shape of a Lava Heron. It wasn't long before the light faded too much to see anything more so we returned to the boat..."

This is another image from Is No Problem made into a greeting card. I took the original photo on a later trip to the Galapagos than the one Simon told in the book, but he saw loads of these wonderful birds then too.

When we visited together, the family atmosphere among the birds was lovely. They are genuinely tame as the local guides enforce the humans sticking to the paths, so they can nest quite close to it. They don’t fear humans, I’d say these two were ten feet away from me, if that, as there have been no predators for millennia, although some islands do have to work to cull rats from time to time.

For now this card comes cellophane wrapped, but this will alter as stocks change. It is blank to allow you to say whatever you would like to say. The accompanying envelope is white