Galapagos Birds – Red-footed Booby with Brown Morph
The brown morph of the red-footed booby is overall brown. The white-tailed brown morph is similar, but has a white belly, rump, and tail. The white-headed and white-tailed brown morph has a mostly white body, tail and head, and brown wings and back.
Galapagos Birds – Red-footed Booby with White Morph
The red-footed booby has several morphs. In the white morph the plumage is mostly white (the head often tinged yellowish) and the flight feathers are black.
Galapagos Birds – Red-footed Booby Portrait
Smallest of the boobies, the red-foot feeds at sea, nests on the ground, and perches in coastal trees. Red-footed boobies appear in a variety of color morphs but, of course, all have feet of the distinctive red color which gives them their name.
Galapagos Birds – Nazca Boobies
Galapagos Birds – Nazca Booby Protecting her Egg
Nazca Booby Birds are the largest of all the boobie birds on the Galapagos Islands.
Nazca Booby Birds lay two eggs, several days apart from which only one chick survives due to a practice called ‘obligatory sibling murdering’. In this process, one of the chicks displaces the other by taking most of the food, therefore growing faster. Once that has been achieved, the larger chick kicks the smallest and weakest chick out of the nest, leaving it to die of thirst or cold. The parent Nazca Booby Birds will not intervene and the younger chick will inevitably die.
It is believed that two eggs are laid so that one remains an insurance in case the other gets destroyed or eaten e.g. by gulls, or the chick dies soon after hatching.
Galapagos Birds – A Booby Baby Chick
A slightly older version of a booby bird – not yet fully developed