Booby Prizes by Les Shutt

If you have selected this page in the hope that you might find something risqué or at worst an appraisal of joke items you’d prefer to avoid, then I regret to disappoint you. On the other hand, if you might like a pictorial travelogue in search of uncommon pelagic birds, this may be just what you are looking for.

The Galapagos Islands lie in the Pacific Ocean, straddling the equator, a two-hour flight away from Quito or Guayaquil, Ecuador, their parent country. Until 1989 flights were to the flat arid Baltra Island, but now there is also an airport on San Cristobal. The number of tourists allowed within this national park was strictly limited to 2500 in any one day controlled by the availability of berths and guides on the registered transport ships. However, in recent years, the number of individuals able to holiday on the islands themselves has increased giving some cause for concern by conservationists.

We arrived to Baltra and were then transferred by panga (small fishing boat) to the MV Santa Cruz, our floating home for the next three days. The first two days were spent on and around the central islands of Santa Cruz and Santiago, observing numerous Marine Iguanae, Sally Lightfoot Crabs, Lizards, Frigate Birds and Darwin’s (yes, he came in 1835 on HMS Beagle) Finches. We had strict instructions from the guides to stay on the footpaths and to keep a healthy, long before Covid, 2 metre distance from all wildlife. But because the Galapagos fauna see so few humans, they are often inquisitive and seem to have little fear of mankind. When relaxing on the beach a playful sea lion might come ashore to enjoy a roll in your towel.

But what did we just see on a steep dive?

That was a Blue-footed Booby diving to catch a fish. Boobies are members of the Gannet family. Booby refers to the Spanish ‘Bobo’ meaning clown and relates to the courtship dance of the Blue foots in lifting to show off their feet and mutually pointing their faces skyward. The foot colour is sexually linked in that females are more attracted to the brighter blue feet of young males. Blue foots are pelagic i.e., they spend most of their time at sea and breed on rocky shores. They are common in the Galapagos, but their range is limited to the eastern Pacific. The archipelago is home to two more booby species, Red-footed and Nazca, both in colonies on the more remote islands, close to oceanic waters. On our second night, our ship motored north and at dawn entered Darwin Bay, the former volcanic caldera of the horseshoe–shaped island of Genovesa. The Red foots, the smallest of the booby species, also have red legs and a pale blue bill. They nest in trees on the 60-foot cliffs which edge the bay, laying one egg, incubated by both parents for 45 days. They follow ships at sea and catch, in midair, flying fish disturbed by the boat’s movement. Red foot colonies are found in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of all the great oceans. Nazca Boobies are white with black tail feathers and a yellow/pink beak. They co-habit with the Red foots and lay two eggs in open ground but only raise one chick. The eggs are laid and therefore hatch within a few days of each other. The strongest growing chick forces the weakest out of the nest, where it is ignored by the parents and falls prey to scavengers - a process of obligate siblicide. Should the first egg not hatch the second is the insurance policy. Like the Blue foots, Nazca Boobies are eastern pacific birds.

Blue-footed Boobies

Red-footed pair

Nazca Booby & chick (Nazca relates to a 2000 BC culture of coastal Peru)

And the prizes? To walk so close to wild birds and thereby take sharp images of their behavioural patterns is a pleasure that lives long in the memory. The following day we were walking amongst giant tortoises on San Cristobel Island before taking the flight back to the UK.