Blue-footed Booby Facts

Scientific Classification

KINGDOM: Animalia

PHYLUM: Chordata

CLASS: Aves

ORDER: Suliformes

FAMILY: Sulidae

GENUS: Sula

SPECIES: S. nebouxii

Conservation Status

Blue-footed boobies are appropriately named for their bright blue feet. Their average length is 35 inches with a weight of three pounds and wingspan of five feet!

Females are slightly larger than males, have a duller shade of blue feet, and less yellow in their irises. As adults, both sexes have light brown heads with white streaks, and a mostly white body except the back, wings, and tail which are brown.

Blue-footed boobies are great flyers and swimmers; however, they aren’t so graceful at walking. Their sleek body, narrow wings, and tail make them agile in the water. They can easily move in continuous, high-speed dive from the air to shallow water back out.

Their nostrils are permanently closed so water doesn’t go up their beak when they dive.

Besides the slight vocalization differences that come with differing blue-footed booby genders, mates can recognize each other’s calls out of hundreds of other birds.

The blue-footed booby is a marine bird that can be found down the continental coasts of the Pacific Ocean in places such as California all the way down to Peru. It prefers to stay among the water and only return to the shore to breed and raise young.

Blue-footed boobies sometimes hunt alone, in pairs, or in a larger group. Homing in on bigger schools of fish makes their diving technique more likely to succeed.

Their diet consists mainly of smaller fish such as sardines, anchovies, mackerel, and more. The fish or squid these boobies eat are high in the antioxidant carotenoid, which gives the feet their blue color.

Male blue-footed boobies are known to hunt closer to the shore since they are smaller than females. Besides their smaller size, males have larger tails which helps in quickly changing direction underwater.

During mating season, female blue-footed boobies choose males with brighter blue feet since it usually equates to healthiness. Males will show off their feet and bow their heads in a courtship dance. After mating, females will lay 2-3 eggs a couple days apart and share incubation duties with the male using their feet to keep the eggs warm.

Boobies are believed to have gotten their name from the Spanish slang term “bobo”, which means “stupid”, as these birds were often seen landing on board ships making it easy to capture and eat them.