Blue-Footed Booby with Egg Postcard

A female Blue-footed Booby incubates her egg with her bright blue feet on North Seymour Island in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. The Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii) lays its eggs on bare ground within a circle formed from accumulated guano. The female lays one to three eggs, which hatch after an incubation period of around 41 days. Boobies incubate the eggs using warmth from a rich network of blood vessels in the webs of the feet. The Blue-footed Booby is easily recognisable by its distinctive bright blue feet. Males display their feet in an elaborate mating ritual by lifting their feet up and down while strutting before the female. The female is slightly larger than the male and can measure up to 36 inches long (90 cm ) long with a wingspan up to 4.9 feet (1.5 m) and has larger pupils The blue colour of the blue-footed booby’s webbed feet comes from carotenoid pigments from its diet of fresh fish. Dull feet indicate a poor diet or ill health. The Blue-footed Booby’s diet consists mainly of fish. It feeds on small school fish such as sardines, anchovies, mackerel, and flying fish. It also feeds on squid and offal. The Blue-footed Booby dives into the ocean, sometimes from a great height, and can swim underwater in pursuit of its prey. It hunts alone, in pairs, or in larger flocks. The name booby comes from the Spanish word bobo (“stupid”, “fool”, or “clown”) because the blue-footed booby is, like other seabirds, clumsy on land. They are also regarded as foolish for their apparent fearlessness of humans. The Galapagos Islands are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The islands are famed for their vast number of endemic (unique) species and were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.