Isn’t it cute?!? It was very interested in my roommate Nushe. Walked straight up to her and started calling. And when Nushe was bitten by one of the nearby black foots, this little guy went right to her defense.
You should note that this is a juvenile. When it molts it will lose all the brown on its head, save a clear dark mask around its eyes, giving the bird its name. Masked Boobies don’t typically breed this far North in the Hawaiian Islands. They are far more common in the more southern northern Hawaiian Islands, so a juvenile in particular, or really any, Masked Booby is quite the cool sighting.
Boobies are members of the order Pelecaniformes, the order that also includes pelicans, cormorants, frigate birds, gannets, and anhingas. The key feature of this order that is particularly prominent in boobies is that they are totipalmate, meaning that they have webbing between all four of their toes; this is different from other birds with webbed feet, which are only webbed between the front three toes.
Having big feet have multiple uses. For one Pelecaniformes also lack brood patches, an area on a birds belly that becomes featherless for egg incubation. Booby feet are thus highly vascularized and they can actually use their feet to keep their eggs warm during incubation. Both males and females do this.
Another result of having such large feet is that it actually becomes difficult to walk without tripping over them. For this reason boobies swing each foot out to the side as they waddle forward… a sight that is ridiculously cute and one I’d never seen before today.
All photos are courtesy of Chris Seliga, who did not forget to bring his camera to Eastern Island yesterday.
