Under these drastically changing conditions, the struggle to survive favored the larger birds with deep, strong beaks for opening the hard seeds. Smaller finches with less-powerful beaks perished.

Then he clacks his beak, and it resonates in the sac like a drumbeat, a thrumming love call. “You hear it long before you see them,” says Jen Jones of the Galapagos Conservation Trust ...

In fact, the region is home to 45 types of marine birds and 22 land birds you won't see anywhere else (think: Galapagos penguins ... including frigate birds, pelicans, and blue-footed boobies ...

from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends." Indeed, the Galapagos have been called a living laboratory where speciation can ...