Today’s book on the bird table is a new, updated version of Galapagos Crusoes: A Year Alone with the Birds, which has been published by Bradt Guides. Written by the renowned late British ornithologist Bryan Nelson, it features additional, previously unpublished reminiscences and memories from June Nelson, Bryan’s wife.
This timely reissue contains the complete text of the original 1968 book – including the foreword by the Duke of Edinburgh who met the couple during their stay – alongside wry contemporary commentary from June, now in her eighties.
The Nelsons spent a year studying seabirds on two uninhabited, waterless Galapagos islands in 1964. Their research project was one of the earliest after the Galapagos was made a national park in 1959. For zoologist Bryan, specialising in the gannet family, the archipelago made the perfect location.
In Galapagos Crusoes, June complements her late husband’s stories with her own memories. The book combines fascinating, still-relevant observations about bird behaviour – the famous blue-footed boobies, waved albatrosses and rare lava gulls- with the trials and tribulations of a year of meagre rations, bug-infested food supplies, deteriorating equipment and wildlife that was too tame for comfort. It is wonderfully descriptive on daily life on a desert island; planning what to take, keeping sane and alive, the joys and frustrations, the demanding work and challenging minutiae.
As the sole human residents of Tower Island (Genovesa) and Hood Island (Española), the Nelsons lived this Robinson Crusoe lifestyle with no means of rescue. As the year ended, clothes in tatters and barefoot, the couple dined with Prince Philip aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia – he had acquired a passion for seabirds through his worldwide sea voyages and had stopped off to visit the Nelsons when passing the Galapagos. It was a surreal ending to a remarkable experience.
This is a fascinating insight into life as humans on remote islands, and June and Bryan’s interactions with the wildlife they are studying and working to protect.
Publication hopes to help raise awareness of the Galapagos Conservation Trust, in particular its project to halt the population decline of the Floreana mockingbird, one of the world’s rarest species of birds.
“I would strongly advise anyone who has ideas about rushing off to live on a desert island to think three and preferably four times about it and then to consult June Nelson.”
HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, from his foreword to the 1968 edition
 About the Authors:
 Keen outdoor, conservation and do-it-yourself folk, Bryan and June Nelson met in 1954 and spent their honeymoon on the Bass Rock in Scotland, where they studied gannets for three years. With a First in Zoology and a D.Phil. from Oxford, Bryan went on, with June, to study the behaviour and ecology of seabirds in the Galapagos, Peru, Christmas Island and New Zealand.
Bryan became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a founder board member of the Scottish Seabird Centre. June spent time as a relationship counsellor with Couple Counselling, worked in a wholefood shop and cafe, as well as with adults with learning disabilities, and later became secretary of the Sutherland Trust, which aims to stimulate thinking about psychodynamic approaches to health, social care and education.
With the help of Prince Philip, Bryan and June persuaded Australia to help save the rare Abbott’s booby. Bryan died in 2015 aged 83. June, now 85, recently narrated an award-winning film by George Pretty on climate change and seabirds. She believes vehemently in ‘keeping going’.
Galapagos Crusoes: A Year Alone with the Birds is available from outlets including Amazon and Waterstones.
Image credits: Bryan Nelson
Galapagos Crusoes: A Year Alone with the Birds
£10.11
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