Warning: This does not directly concern recording or sound though it might
lead to some if I'm lucky.
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The first 100 pages of Pulitzer Prize winning "The Beak of the Finch" by
Jonathon Weiner (1994, but I'm now reading it for the first time) is enough
to convince me of its' being one of the most fascinating science-based books
I've read.
I guess I am not alone in associating Galapagos finches with Charles Darwin
and his theory of evolution by natural selection, but without knowing any of
the details. And no, I'm not going into that now. I write to quote
something absolutely amazing about these finches.
It concerns their fantastic ability to cope with the climatic extremes to
which they are exposed. The El Nino effect (or lack of!) is greatly
magnified it seems, and severe drought is common. But in '83, Galapagos
experienced the El Nino of the century. Certainly the most rain on those
islands in living memory.
Lisle Gibbs was the 'lucky' one to experience that wet season, out of a
succession of scientists studying the finches of Daphne Major Island. I now
quote passages from the book:
"Gibbs had vines growing up the tent poles, and he could see them
growing from morning to noon and from noon to evening, a few centimetres per
day.
"The Croton trees flowered not just once or twice but as many as seven
times, so each tree and bush set seven crops of seeds and every one a bumper
crop. One Croton seed fell to the ground in December, and by May the plant
was level with the eyes of a tall man, whereupon it burst into flower too."
And the finches:
" 'The birds went crazy,' Gibbs says. 'The year before there had been
no breeding at all. Now they bred like hell.' On Daphne, females produced
up to forty eggs and fledged twenty-five young. The most prolific pair on
Genovesa laid twenty-nine eggs in seven clutches, and twenty fledglings
hopped out of the nest.'
"In the steamy rains more and more of the birds were turning bigamous
or polygamous. On Genovesa one female finch went through four males, one
after the other."
Most finches don't breed until two years old and by then the researchers
recognise them individually. But in this season they encountered banded
breeders they didn't recognise:
" 'Finally, we realised they were kids - three months old,' Gibbs says.
The young birds they had banded in the first weeks, were pairing off and
mating in the cactus bushes. No one on earth had ever reported anything
like this: passerine birds are not supposed to breed in the same season they
are born.
"The youngest to breed was a *fortis* less than three months old. She
laid four eggs in her first clutch, and two chicks survived to leave the
nest."
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The Galapagos Islands are so famous, it seem possible that someone may have
produced a commercial CD, or audio cassette of the wildlife sounds. Does
anyone know of such?
Syd Curtis in Brisbane, Australia,
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