Brown Booby

The booby's head and upper body (back) is covered in dark brown to blackish plumage, with the remainder (belly) being a contrasting white. The bare-part colours vary geographically, but not seasonally. The species also displays sexual dimorphism of the bare part colours, the males having a blue orbital ring, as opposed to the yellow orbital ring of the female. Female boobies reach about 80 centimetres (31 in) in length; their wingspans measure up to 150 cm (4.9 ft), and they can weigh up to 1,300 g (2.9 lb). Male boobies reach about 75 centimetres (30 in) in length; their wingspans measure up to 140 cm (4.6 ft), and they can weigh up to 1,000 g (2.2 lb). Unlike other species of sulid, the juvenile plumage already resembles that of the adult. They are grey-brown with darkening on the head, upper surfaces of the wings and tail, while the lower breast and underpart plumages are heavily flecked brown on white. Their beaks are quite sharp and contain jagged edges. They have fairly short wings resulting in a fast flap rate, but long, tapered tails. While these birds are typically silent, they occasionally make grunting or quacking sounds.

This species breeds on islands and coasts in the pantropical areas of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. They frequent the breeding grounds of the islands in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. With the rise in pollution in the world, brown boobies have been using marine debris to make their nests, with 90.1% of these nest were consisted of plastic, while nests near shipwreck have a high percentage of the wreckage debris. This bird nests in large colonies, laying two chalky blue eggs on the ground in a mound of broken shells and vegetation, but usually raises just one chick, the second one to hatch being unable to compete for food with its older sibling, or even ejected from the nest by it. It winters at sea over a wider area. Brown booby pairs may remain together over several seasons. They perform elaborate greeting rituals, and are also spectacular divers, plunging into the ocean at high speed. They eat mainly small fish (such as flying fish, mullets, halfbeaks, anchovies, goatfish, crowned squirrelfish, and Indian mackerels), squids (including the family Ommastrephidae), or shrimps which gather in groups near the surface and may catch leaping fish while skimming the surface. Along with plunge-diving, some fledglings and adults practice kleptoparasitism, where they steal prey from other seabirds. …