testmeat photoblog

i was trying to remember the name of this bird, which i chased all over the galapagos islands trying to photograph. i remember our guide pointing out a lot of birds called 'darwin's finches' so i thought i'd have a look on wikipedia to learn some more. it turns out darwin's finches are a group of around 15 species of birds, none of which are actually finches. more interestingly these finches played an important role in confirming the idea of transmutation of species which ultimately led to darwin's historic theory of evolution. these non-finchy finches were similar but distinct species, and inhabited specific islands on the galapagos. yet they shared very similar characteristics to birds that lived on the south american coast, which has a very different ecosystem and is over 1000 km away. this didn't make much sense with the traditional view of independent creation - why would a series of birds be created on a group of islands and be almost identical to birds hundreds of miles away - was god just being lazy? it made more sense to charlie that one group was a modification... or if you will evolution... of the other group. it's hard to believe that 150 years later this idea only makes sense to 54% of americans. the final thing that i learnt was that this bird isn't a darwin finch, but a yellow warbler - a bird that inhabits most of north america, central america, and northern south america. so, not quite as special as the finches then. sorry for wasting your time, forget all that you've just read.

here's the original