Blue-footed Booby

Tim Melling
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Blue-footed Booby
Blue-footed Booby

Most photographs of Blue-footed Booby come from the Galapagos Islands, where about half of the world's population breeds, and where you can walk amongst displaying adults lifting their blue feet. But I have never been to Galapagos and in Baja they nest high on inaccessible rocks, so I have had to make-do with a flight shot. But at least you can still see a blue foot if you zoom in. I have just searched this species on Flickr and did not see a single flight shot apart from my own, yet there were thousands of perched birds from Galapagos.

You can probably tell that they are relatives of Gannets and the name Booby means stupid because of their apparent tameness allowing themselves to be caught. This is the origin of the term Booby Trap, which was a lasso baited with a fish, which was pulled tight when the bird stepped in. This species only breeds along tropical coasts and islands of the eastern Pacific. It was named Sula nebouxii by the French naturalist Alphonse Milne-Edwards in 1882. He chose the name to honour the surgeon, naturalist, and explorer Adolphe-Simon Neboux (1806–1844) who had died 38 years earlier, but who visited Galapagos just after Darwin. It is interesting that Darwin must have seen Blue-footed Boobies when he visited Galapagos in 1835, yet the species wasn't formally described until nearly fifty years later.

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Taken on: February 25, 2024
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Sets appears in:   • Baja 2024   
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