Photo of Humboldt Penguins in San Lorenzo's Island, Peru. Photo by Eduardo Libby
Nature Photography

Peru’s Palomino Islands

4 Comments

I live in Costa Rica and I always wanted to see the huge seabird and seal colonies from either North or South America. When I went to Peru of course I had to visit the famous Guano Islands that were so important for harvesting bird droppings to make fertiliser and saltpetre. There are still huge guano deposits from the enormous seabird colonies that live there.

There are day trips departing from the Port of El Callao, close to Lima, to the small Palomino Islands. The rocky islands are just south of San Lorenzo Island, the largest in Peru. The tour brochures advertise a lot of great species like the Humboldt Penguin (Spheniscus humboldti), the Peruvian Booby (Sula variegata) and the South American Sea Lion (Otaria flavescens)… twist my arm!

I got to see the three species and a few more. Here are some of the photos from that trip. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I hope you will like the photos too.

Photo of a natural bridge or arch in the Palomino's Islands. Photo by Eduardo Libby.
A natural bridge or arch in the Palomino’s Islands with roosting Peruvian Booby colonies.
Photo of Peruvian Booby colony in Peru. Photo by Eduardo Libby
Peruvian Boobies by the thousands covered the rocky islands.
Photo of South American Sea Lions on a rock. Photo by Eduardo Libby
The Peruvian waters are rich in seafood, and Peruvian Seafood is legendary. The Sea Lions get its share too.
Photo of South American Sea Lions on Peru's Palomino Islands. Photo by Eduardo Libby.
Sea Lion colonies are impressive: large and filled with the very human-like screams of the animals. They have a foul smell but it is worth enduring it to get a close look.
Photo of Humboldt Penguins in San Lorenzo's Island, Peru. Photo by Eduardo Libby
The Humboldt penguins were out in the rocks. There are penguins in warmer waters farther north, in the Galapagos but these guys enjoy the cold waters of the Humboldt current.

4 thoughts on “Peru’s Palomino Islands”

      1. I am a preschool teacher and one of my favorite units is to teach the kids about the north and south poles. All 4-year-olds think that penguins live at the north pole, so it is always fun to show them where they really live and talk about the differences and what animals live at which end of the earth. I love showing them the globe and the pictures of the different kinds of penguins. It would be awesome to see some of those penguins for myself!

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Peru is a great country to visit… and eat well. There are several places to see wildlife but If you want to walk through a penguin colony then Chile would be better.

        Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s