AMAZING DARWIN'S FINCHES

The trip would ultimately change the 26-year-old's life forever, as it did to create scientific and social upheaval among conventional believers of natural history.

Unimpressed by the lava strewn landscape and desert like appearance that seemed to disdain life, Darwin reacted with dismay, "Nothing could be less inviting," he wrote. He described the islands as "a broken field of black basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great fissures."

And Darwin was not the only one who felt this way. American author, Herman Melville, was equally mystified, "In no world but a fallen one could such lands exist."

Darwin clued in on the size and shape of the 13 species of Galapagos finches to explain his astounding theory of evolution, which resulted in his furor-raising classic, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (published in 1859).

The scientific world concurs with Darwin that every Galapagos finch shares a common stock. Every new generation had to conform to the remote island habitat and subsequently developed different characteristics. But they did hang on to their inherited survival traits.

"A most singular group of finches," the naturalist had recorded in his notes. Even after he had left the islands he mused about the finches, and wrote, "Seeing this graduation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds one species had been taken and modified for different ends."

Darwin came to observe, record and collect anything of interest to him as a naturalist. We are here for soft adventure, sailing aboard Ecoventura's M.Y. Eric island hopping in the Galapagos. Raul, our nature guide, is eager to show us the treasures of his homeland (he is a native son of San Cristobal).

During the week's voyage, we see 11 of the 13 species of Darwin finches on several islands, dull looking brown or black birds with stubs for tails.

The more we saw of them, the better I understood how these feathered island residents fired Darwin's imagination about their existence. Who could explain just how and why this happened?

The naturalist's answers bordered on the strong conclusion that it was merely their survival techniques, popularly known as "survival of the fittest."

Darwin figured that when they face starvation, sickness and predators, the finches engage wit, speed and strength, all coping mechanisms, to remain alive. He explained the logic in his book -"If variations useful to any organic being ever do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance, these will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized."

Like the man who 'lent' his name to these birds, we are mesmerized by their antics.

The Darwin finches show how "bill adept" they can be by extracting the pulp from a prickly pear cactus (cactus ground finch, geospiza scandens) using their long, slender bills.

While the large ground finch, geospiza magnirostris has the biggest bill that cracks hard seed, the warbler finch, Certhidea olivacea, uses its small bill to eats insects.

The most cunning display comes from the sharp beaked ground finch, geospiza difficilis, that steals the booby's eggs from unguarded nests. To crack open the egg, the finch uses its beak to anchor its body then slams the egg into a rock repeatedly like a powerful kick boxer. They are also crafty enough to roll eggs downhill to achieve the same results.

Tame behavior compared to the Dracula nightmare these little birds inflict on their victims -red-footed and masked boobies. It often attacks the boobies, puncturing the skin beneath the feathers with its sharp beak and then drinking the oozing blood. This is the so called "vampire finch."

A superbly intelligent and talented bird among Darwin's finches is the woodpecker finch, Camarhynchus pallidus. Nicknamed the "carpenter finch" the bird uses twigs to dislodge grubs or insects from trees. The finch selects a twig or a cactus spine according to shape and size. Either way, a bird will carry its "tool" around if it does a particularly good job.

The Schwarzenegger of these amazing birds is the large cactus ground finch, geospiza conirostris), blessed with a magnificent bill that could probably get this guy a job at McDonalds, if they would allow him to flip hamburgers the way he tosses rocks over looking for food.

Treading in the footsteps of the father of the theory of evolution, is totally and unforgettably captivating, once you travel through this Pacific archipelago that was also called Las Islas Encantadas - The Enchanted Islands.

A world like no other exists in the Galapagos Islands.

It's paradise lost and found.