Blue-footed booby
Sula nebouxii
— Where the name comes from
Sula is the Norwegian name of the northern gannet, taken into scientific nomenclature straight from the speech of the fishermen of the North. Nebouxii recalls Adolphe-Simon Neboux, a French naval surgeon who collected the first specimen on a Pacific voyage. The English booby comes from the Spanish bobo, “fool”: sailors caught them by hand on deck because they would not fly away.
— Facts
- Group
- Birds · Aves
- Order
- Cormorants and boobies
- Habitat
- Islands and rocky coasts of the eastern Pacific
- Range
- From California to Peru, including the Galápagos
- Size
- 76–84 cm, wingspan 150–160 cm, 1.2–1.8 kg
- Diet
- Shoaling fish taken in plunge dives
- Lifespan
- 17 years in the wild
— Characteristics
- 01
It dives from twenty metres, closing its wings at the last instant.
- 02
It has air sacs under the skin of the skull that absorb the impact.
- 03
In courtship it lifts its feet one at a time, as in a slow march.
— What sets it apart
That blue is a medical report. The colour comes from carotenoids in the fish and fades within forty-eight hours if the bird goes without food: a vivid foot says its owner has eaten well for two days and has a functioning immune system. Females check before mating, and in an experiment in which already-paired males had the colour of their feet dulled, their partners laid smaller eggs in the following clutch. Courtship here consists, quite literally, of showing your test results.
