Blue-footed boobies take great
pride due to their marvelous feet. During mating rituals, male birds normally
show off their feet to prospective mates with a high stepping strut. The
blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii) is a marine bird in the family Sulidae, which
includes ten species of long-winged seabirds. Therefore the bluer the feet, the
mate considered more attractive. The
booby species are thought to take their name from the Spanish word (bobo),
means “stupid, clown, and Fool”. Because
the blue-footed booby is clumsy on land regarded as foolish for their apparent
fearlessness of humans. Blue feet also indicate the current health condition of
a booby, thus, the feet are rapid and honest indicators of a booby's current
level of nourishment. The blue feet are signs that reliably point toward the
immunological and health condition of a booby, coloration is favored through
sexual selection.
These impressively beautiful feet
birds live off the western coasts of central and South America. The Galápagos Islands population includes
about half of all breeding pairs of blue-footed boobies. The female bird is
somewhat larger than the male and can measure up to 90 cm long with a wingspan
of up to 1.5 m. Similar to other boobies the blue-foot nest on land at night. The
boobies are flew in search of seafood, may fly far out to sea keeping an eye
for schools of small fish in cooperative groups such as sardines, anchovies,
mackerel, and flying fish. These
seabirds are exceptional divers, fold their long wings back around their
streamlined bodies and plunge into the water from as high as 24 meters and
swimming underwater in search of its prey. Even, they can also dive from a
sitting position on the water’s surface. These birds hit the water around 97
km/h and have ability to go to depths of 25 meters below the water surface.
Both sexes start breeding between
1 to 6 years. The blue-footed booby usually lays 1-3 eggs at a time, and
they’re very caring to their chicks, use their webbed feet to cover and keep
them warm. Both male and female take turns incubating the eggs, and the
incubation period is falling between 41–45 days. Both male and female birds
share parental responsibilities. The male will provide food for the young and
chicks feed off the regurgitated fish in the adult's mouth. The boobies’
natural breeding habitats are tropical and subtropical islands of Pacific
Ocean. The blue-footed booby wings are brown color, neck and head are light
brown with white streaks, belly and underside full white plumage. The boobies’
are having distinctive yellow color eyes with excellent binocular vision.
The blue-footed booby's hunts singly, in
pairs, or in larger flocks. Blue-footed boobies make raucous or polysyllabic
grunts or shout and thin whistling noises and their ritual displays are also a
form of communication, hence mates can identify each other by their calls. The
blue-footed booby population appears to having trouble breeding and thus is
slowly declining. The decline is feared to be long-term, but annual data
collection is needed for a firm conclusion that this is not a normal
fluctuation. Food problems may be the cause of an observed failure of the birds
to even try to breed.
