The lovely finch tells a story, aesthetic and scientific, that most of us accept as the gospel truth, about adaptation and evolution.  A good interpretive guide can help the average lay person understand the story.  Charles Darwin penciled out some of the first notes that guides use to explain why finches vary in color, beak size, behaviors, etc. and plenty of very smart people have contributed to the evolution of those explanations.  So we continue to learn.

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A visit to the Galapagos Islands should include attention to the finch, considering the role they played in the ability we now have to understand some of the mysteries of the natural world.  Likewise, the iguana.  What majesty!  In the photos below, there are two species, long ago related but now with completely different lifestyles.  If you encounter the black variety first, as I did, on the white sand, you will see solar energy at work: they come out of the ocean after nibbling algae, exhausted and needing the sun’s power to recharge.  If you see them in several different locations, some of the patterns of their lives unfold.

And then, when you encounter the land-based variety, you see adaptation in living color.