Amazing Finch Behaviours In May 1995 their dream came true and Australian film-makers David Parer, Elizabeth Parer-Cook and their three year old daughter Zoe, returned to the Galapagos to make several films including "Islands of the Vampire Birds". Over a two year period they spent 500 days in the field, 200 days of which were spent on boats. Assisted by a guide David Day and an Ecuadorian assistant Segundo Guaman they travelled to many islands of the Archipelago including Darwin and Wolf to film the vampire finches. Wolf Island is dominated by pounding waves, steep cliffs and tens of thousands of seabirds - a tiny speck of land 200km north of the main Galapagos Archipelago. In 1964 an American expedition landed there and scientists observed for the first time the incredible blood sucking behaviour of the vampire finches, something the Parers desperately wanted to film. Over their two year stay in the Galapagos they visited Wolf many times. And what slowly unfolded before their camera was a litany of feeding techniques and survival strategies that were extraordinary in the extreme. For most of the year the climate on Wolf Island is tinder dry and the seeds that are produced in the brief periods of rain are quickly eaten by the finches. So to survive the long dry spells the finches turn to the seabirds for sustenance. In the breeding season when the masked boobies lay their eggs, the finches sneak up behind them and sip the lubricating fluids from around the egg as it emerges from their cloaca - a food rich in protein. Inexperienced boobies often lay their eggs out of the nest area and the finches quickly move it beyond the mother's reach. Young finches try and break the shell, but their small beaks are not strong enough to do so. But certain adult males are experts at rolling eggs. They use their beak as a pivot against the ground and push the egg with their legs to roll it over the uneven floor of the colony. After negotiating many dead ends, they manoeuvre the egg to the edge of a rock ledge. A final shove pushes it over the edge and it falls and breaks open releasing the contents. Later when eggs hatch and the booby chicks appear, the finches pull out their downy quills and eat them - a rich source of fat. But perhaps their most important source of food during the extended droughts is blood. The finches begin by landing on the tail of a seabird. They peck at the base of it's wing feathers breaking the skin and causing it to bleed. As the blood oozes out the finches sip it every few seconds. Other finches line up behind the booby like a queue at a blood bank and as soon as one leaves it's blood-sucking perch another takes its place. It looks gruesome but doesn't appear to do any long term harm to the boobies. http://www.suparsit.com/