Least ConcernBlue-footed Booby
Sula nebouxii
10 countries13 parks2 dive sites
Species group · Birds
WAnimals has 7 species of booby, in the family Sulidae.
Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.
1 species in this group is in a threatened category according to the IUCN.
Recorded in 76 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:
The deeper the blue of its feet — a colour produced by carotenoid pigments in its diet — the better its condition, and mates choose accordingly.
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It eats small fish and squid caught by plunge-diving.
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It lives on arid islands and rocky coasts of the tropical eastern Pacific, including the Galápagos.
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It lays two eggs and one chick always dies: the older chick physically pushes the younger one out of the nest in the first few days and the parents do not intervene, a case of obligate siblicide that happens in practically every brood.
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Unpaired adults harass other birds' chicks, and chicks that have suffered that harassment repeat it when they reach adulthood, a cycle passed between generations that has been documented by the monitoring work in the Galápagos.
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It was split from the masked booby as a species in its own right in 2002, after years of genetic and behavioural analysis.
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Together with the guanay cormorant it produced the guano deposits that sustained the Peruvian economy of the 19th century: millions of tonnes of droppings accumulated over centuries on the Pacific islands were exported.
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Ranges calculated from the profiles that record the figure, not from all 7.
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Its colonies run to hundreds of thousands, and its feeding flocks darken the sky over the Peruvian sea, forming columns that plunge in cascades onto the anchoveta shoals.
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