The Galápagos Islands Wildlife Calendar

The Galápagos is an incredible location, with most of the animals and birds visible year-round. From lizards and iguanas to giant tortoises, sea lions and fur seals, cormorants, flamingos and boobies, to frigatebirds and penguins, the islands are rich with magnificent wildlife. There’s so much to see, and there really is no ‘best time’ to visit; it’s fabulous throughout the year. The archipelago is generally warmer and wetter between December and May, and between June and November, it’s cooler and drier, during which cooler ocean currents attract more marine life.

ཀྵ On Española, adult marine iguanas are at their most brightly coloured

ཀྵ Green sea turtles arrive on the beaches to lay their eggs

ཀྵ Land birds begin their courtship and nesting rituals

ཀྵ Galápagos sea lions are at the end of their mating season

ཀྵ Giant tortoises begin to hatch

ཀྵ Flamingos begin to nest on Floreana

ཀྵ Start of the black-tailed pintail breeding season

ཀྵ Marine iguanas begin to nest on Santa Cruz

ཀྵ Courtship of magnificent frigatebirds begins on North Seymour

ཀྵ The optimum time to see nesting Galápagos doves

ཀྵ Marine iguanas nest on Fernandina

ཀྵ On 21st March, the equinox heralds the arrival of the first waved albatross on Española

ཀྵ Frigatebirds nest on San Cristóbal and Genovesa

ཀྵ Start of the nesting period for Galápagos penguins and flightless cormorants

ཀྵ The peak nesting season for seabirds

ཀྵ A great time to see all four stages of nesting blue-footed boobies on Española - eggs, chicks, juveniles and sub-adults

ཀྵ Flightless cormorants perform beautiful courtship rituals and nest on Fernandina

ཀྵ Lava lizards begin mating rituals

ཀྵ One of the best months to see whales and dolphins

ཀྵ Galápagos hawks begin courtship displays on Española and Santiago

ཀྵ Nazca boobies and swallow-tailed gulls nest on Genovesa

ཀྵ Migrant waders begin to arrive, and stay until March

ཀྵ Giant tortoises return to the highlands on Santa Cruz after laying their eggs

ཀྵ Galápagos sea lions begin to give birth

ཀྵ Galápagos penguins are at their most active on Bartolomé with courtship

ཀྵ Galápagos sea lions are very active – females are in season, and males constantly bark and fight

ཀྵ Blue-footed boobies are nesting on some of the islands

ཀྵ A good month for migrating humpbacks off the coast

ཀྵ Wildflowers bloom in the highlands

ཀྵ Waved albatrosses arrive en-masse on Española to start their courtship

ཀྵ Giant tortoise hatching season comes to an end

ཀྵ Green sea turtle eggs start to hatch

ཀྵ Land iguana eggs hatch on Isabela

ཀྵ The best time to see Galápagos penguins on Isabela

ཀྵ North Seymour’s blue-footed boobies begin their courtship

ཀྵ Green sea turtles hatch at Gardner Bay (Hood), Punta Cormorant (Floreana) and Puerto Egas (Santiago)

ཀྵ Waved albatross on Española begin laying their eggs

ཀྵ Band-rumped storm petrels begin their first nesting period

ཀྵ Migrating humpback whales are seen between now and September

ཀྵ Giant tortoises migrate from the Santa Cruz highlands in search of nesting sites

ཀྵ Southern migrant birds begin their northward journey – Galápagos is an important landfall

ཀྵ Blue-footed boobies begin their courtship rituals on North Seymour

ཀྵ Lava herons start nest building and continue until March

ཀྵ Galápagos fur seals begin mating

ཀྵ Blue-footed boobies raise their chicks on Española and Isabela

ཀྵ Giant tortoises still lay eggs in some places

ཀྵ The beaches are teeming with sea lions and their pups

ཀྵ Galápagos sea lion pupping continues

ཀྵ The breeding season for brown noddies begins

ཀྵ Jellyfish can be seen in the water around the islands

ཀྵ Band-rumped storm petrels begin their second nesting period.

ཀྵ Migrating waders begin arriving from North America in good numbers

ཀྵ Giant tortoise’s eggs begin to hatch, lasting until April

ཀྵ Green sea turtles begin their mating display

ཀྵ The first young waved albatrosses fledge and won’t return until April

ཀྵ Marine iguanas and land iguanas begin their mating rituals