I Love Boobies

Where can we see boobies in Costa Rica?

by Tom Schultz

Okay, stop giggling . The Booby family is one of my favorite pelagic birds . Pelagic means they spend most of their time at sea. Boobies spend most of their time just offshore, not very far out at sea, and nest on land. Beautiful to watch in flight, and always good for a laugh when they are on land due to their silly walks, at least silly to us.

Their name does not derive from where those of you still chuckling like Bevis and Butthead think it does. Their name is actually Spanish- bobo. Bobo is Spanish for fool or silly person, and since they are very clumsy and have a silly walk on land, they started being called bobos. The name got anglicized to the plural of boobies. Here in Costa Rica we also use bobo for the Motmots, but that is because that is how the motmot call sounds - an onomatopoeic name.

In the world, there are a total of only 6 species of boobies, and most people think of the Galapagos as the place to go see them, and they are correct. There are many to see there, and you are able to get close to them, especially the famous Bluefooted Booby, known for their incredible mating dances . But, there are only 3 of the six species to be seen there: the Red and Blue-footed and the Nazca.

Do you know where you can actually see all six species?

Brown Footed Booby searching for the next meal

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