Thoughts from a hide

Some years ago, we visited the Galapagos islands where the variation in beak sizes among the finches was a factor in Darwin's conclusion that they were all descended from a common ancestor and had developed to take advantage of the different food sources available. This led to his great work On the Origin of Species.

Castle on Lindisfarne

We have our own little Galapagos islands off the Northumbrian coast where the terns, puffins and seals breed in safety. On a recent trip to watch the wintering birds,the Brent geese, ducks and waders, it struck me that Darwin could have arrived at the same conclusion on the muddy shoreline of Lindisfarne.

Watching the waders probing the ground for food, each has a bill beautifully adapted for its particular needs, for the depth at which its prey lives and the type of terrain. The sandpiper family ranges from the turnstone with its short strong beak for flipping over stones on the beach to find food beneath to the long bills of the curlews and godwits with their sensitive tips probing soft mud for worms and invertebrates.

Turnstones

All obviously derive from an original wading bird and, further back, there was probably a common predecessor with the stilts, plovers and oystercatchers.

They are monophyletic, all coming from the same distant ancestor bird that picked up scraps from the ground after it had evolved from an even more remote reptilian creature. 

Surf coming in on the shore with Bamburgh Castle in the background

 

Did Darwin have to sail to the other side of the world to see what was under his and everyone else's nose? The voyage probably just clarified what he had been thinking about prior to his trip but would it have received the same acclaim if he just popped along to his nearest seashore or just observed our native finches from hawfinch to crossbill?

 P.S. On the day I was watching the Brent geese on Lindisfarne, another much more experienced and better equipped observer was doing the same and apparently spotted the tag on a goose that showed it was 23+ years old and had flown 100,000 miles in annual migrations !

  https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/holy-island-s-old-goose-has-flown-total-of-100-000-miles-9gz0mqj3k?shareToken=af6d44ac5726642cc2111dd04e51ddc8