Boobies, no, not THAT kind!

Boobies - Red Footed (Sula sula), Brown (Sula leucogaster), and Masked (Sula dactylatra). These cute lil guys are the puppies of the sky. They have funny webbed feet with tiny little claws that are good for paddling in water AND perching on trees. They make nests for their chicks out of twigs between 1-6 feet off the ground and do not seem to have a preference of vegetation to nest in. Booby chicks are my favorite because they are cuter for longer and have more endearing quirks than Red Tails or Frigates. While they aren't the only plunge-divers the live here, I see Boobies hanging out on the water the most out of all the pleagic seabirds on JA. I haven't been able to research it but I also think they have unique eyes for seeing above and below the surface. If we approach them while they're nesting or roosting they do a funny head bob, or "Booby Bow" while rotating left and right, which I think helps them establish depth or at least better perception, as they try to figure out what we are and if we are a threat. My crew does an ironic imitation of this "dance", with our elbows raised behind us similar to what their wings look like, whenever possible during regular conversation. 

During the change over week all personnel got to visit one of the outer islands on the little zodiak boat from the IMUA. We visited North Island, also known as Akau. The other two islands are Sand and East, also known as Hikina. At North we toured around a bit, it is known for the Brown Noddy, Frigates, Brown and Masked Boobies, Bulwer's Petrels, and Christmas Island Shearwaters that nest there. I didn't know to look for any of the unique chicks (Masked Boobies, Bulwer's Petrels, and Christmas Island Shearwaters) but I plan on it when we get to go back on the next change over. I believe I previously said that we did a lot of snorkeling while there. Every time I think of how silly Boobies are I think of the juvenile Masked that followed and watched us as we were snorkeling. He would sit on top of the water like he was resting but would extend his neck down below his little body so that his head was as deep as possible without diving. Then he would just sit there, with his webbed feet poking out to the sides, watching us dive to look at the deep coral. He followed us to at least two different locations and didn't seem to mind when we all surfaced right next to him as long as he could see most of us below water level. I have some pictures or maybe a video saved on my GoPro that hope to be able to send out eventually. He was such a cute lil buddy.

Boobies don't usually sleep with their heads tucked under their wings even though I've seen a few do that. They always sleep perched on a branch or a nest and most the time they sleep with their heads hanging down and their butts way up the air. Ryan joked that when they do this they look like they're hung over or something.

Another funny Booby quirk is their tendency to stare at you with their heads popping up out of whatever bush they're roosting in. They can stretch their weirdly long necks pretty far and can rotate their heads all the way around which allows them to leave their body hidden and makes their heads look like they're floating out of a bush. My favorite is when I have an entire shrub of booby heads watching my every step as I walk by. Boobies tend to roost with as many as possible in the same tree or shrub and even the same branch. Ryan pointed out a group of 4 Boobies that were fighting over who got to sit on a specific branch of a tree. They were pushing each other off, squaking, and even biting each other for a single branch while the rest of the tree was completely vacant. Because they all like to populate the same vegetation, we use "Boobies Trees" as a form of land mark. During a survey a typical statement will be "we need to head in the direction of that booby tree" obviously meaning go towards the tree with all the boobies in it, not the tree next to it where there are no boobies.

You would think that adult Boobies would just fly away if they feel threatened but, for some reason, they more often resort to their other defense mechanisms. These options include, in no particular order: clacking their beaks at us (Frigates do the same thing but to a louder, more threatening degree), "yelling" or making a sounding like a dinosaur from Jurassic Park, letting loose a poop, or, lastly, barfing up their latest meal (being the scientists that we are, of course we're interested in what that meal might have been and I can report that it is most often squid - this makes sense since we hear them fishing at night). Even if their first choice IS to fly away, they're usually too frantic to get a good take off so they end up flying directly AT you, bouncing off the ground (or your head) and into a nearby shrub, and poop/barf anyways. I always wonder why this is their typical behavior despite the fact that they see us approaching very slowly from very far away (Jake has pointed out that they usually attempt to take off into the wind so I will try to take that into consideration when working near them but I don't believe it'll always be feasible). 

CAST surveys the MIC (Mean Incubation Count) of Red Footed (RFBO) every 40 days so I have the most experience with that Booby species. This is also true since the majority of the  nest on the outer islands so we've seen very few, if any, chicks of those species. Booby chicks have 11 stages of growth before they reach fledgling status.