Boobies …

My eyes are always drawn to them and they have been much in evidence at the beach in recent days but getting a decent photo has not been easy.

There are ten species in the family Sulidae, three Gannets and seven Boobies assigned to three genera. The three species of Gannet are found over vast areas of temperate seas and are placed in the genus Morus. The Boobies are found in tropical seas. Six species are in the genus Sula and Abbott’s Booby is the odd one out in a genus all its own Papasula. The Sulids usually stay fairly close to the coast, nest on islands and feed on fish which they catch by plunge diving.

Gannets tend to gather in good numbers over schools of fish and dive vertically putting on a fantastic display for the observer. The Booby most frequently seen off Broome beaches is the Brown Booby Sula leucogaster. Over the last few days I’ve been watching them feed less spectacularly by belly flopping. They seem to be taking food from the surface or not far beneath it.

The scientific name leucogaster translates as white belly which might have been a better name than Brown because they are so dark that you need to be very close to see that they’re not black. Perhaps that was rejected because most of the other Boobies also have white underparts. The light bone-coloured bill indicates that this one is an adult female.