Charles Darwin was the famous English naturalist who visited the Galapagos in the early 1830s. His observations of the differing beak shapes of the “finches” in those isolated islands lead him to solidify his theories on natural selection and species evolution. Not being a bird expert, Darwin was wrong about the birds being finches (they are in the tanager family), but the name stuck and that is what these Galapagos birds are commonly called today.  

 

This painting is based on a photo that I took on our Galapagos cruise in October 2013. There currently are 13 species of Darwin’s finches and I think this is a small ground finch, Geospiza fuliginosa. It may be cute, but it also looks a lot like the sharp-beaked ground finch, which has a subspecies aptly known as the vampire finch because of its propensity for drinking the blood of large sea birds. However, that subspecies is not found on Santa Cruz Island.