THE MYSTERIOUS OWL GULI

Far away in the Galápagos Islands, a peculiar nocturnal seabird is finally starting to give up its secrets

- Words and photos by TUI DE ROY

GHOSTLY WHITE FORMS DRIFTED LIKE white handkerchiefs on the brisk night breeze, dipping, rising, flapping, turning and tumbling over an inky black ocean. My small sailing boat rocked gently on the waves, while a handful of stars blinked between the clouds above. The shoreline lay some 30km ahead, just visible as a faint smudge on the horizon, but my gaze was fixated on these spectral beings in constant motion.

That experience was more than half-a-century ago and remains one of my favourite teenage memories. I was living on the Galápagos – as I still am today – and, back then, moving between the archipelago's islands involved hand-steering from the open cockpit of a small boat. I was just 17, working as a naturalist and deckhand, taking the first very small groups of visitors to see 'my' islands. We travelled at night so we could spend the days exploring on land. Those white handkerchiefs over the sea were in fact swallow-tailed gulls (Creagrus furcatus), found only in the Galápagos and in tiny numbers on Malpelo Island, off Colombia, some 1,600km to the northeast. And they weren't aimlessly blowing past the boat: they were hunting - in near total darkness.

I watched them for hours that night, barely visible in the dim glow of the navigation lights, swooping down and back up with extraordinary agility. They emitted strange, shrill crackling noises, mostly when they suddenly dipped low over the lightless sea surface. It was utterly captivating.