Adopting a blue footed booby

If you have found my blog interesting and love the boobies you can adopt one from the Galapagos island and help them survive in the wild.

For £25 you get you will receive a sponsorship pack which contains a post card that contains information about the species and the Galapagos.You will also get an adoption certificate and a Blue footed booby magnet so you can put your adoption certificate on the fridge and remind yourself of your blue footed booby.

If you pay £40 you get everything above but also you get a lovely Blue footed booby tie that you can wear out and show the world the Blue footed booby.

to adopt one i used this site:
https://secure.gct.org/sponsor3.html

there are other sites like:
http://www.worldwildlife.org/ogc/species_SKU.cfm?cqs=CTBB

Video

Blue Footed Boobies, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador - The most popular videos are a click away

Blue booby facts

The word booby comes from the spanish word bobo which means fool. They got this name because they allowed people capture them and kill them and they just stood there because the Galapagos islands where not inhabated by people for hundreads of years and the boobies are not prey for any other animal so they saw no reason to be scared of anyone so when the English came they killed to boobies and they just stood there and didn't run away.

The male Blue-footed Booby bird brings food back to the nest for the female bird and the chicks. The chicks take regurgitated fish from their parents beaks.

The diet of the Blue-footed Booby consists entirely of fish. It dives into the ocean, sometimes from a great height, and swims underwater in pursuit of its prey. It hunts singly, in pairs or in larger flocks. When the lead bird sees a fish shoal in the water, it will signal the rest of the group and they will all dive together to catch the fish.

The colour of the feet in these boobies ranges in the tones of blue from electric blue or indigo blue and even turquoise blue and it has nothing to do either with gender or age of the boobies. Nobody knows why this blue colour was selected by nature but it is helpful for the boobies to recognize their own kind.

Facts

On average a blue footed booby can live up to seventeen years old in the wild.

Blue footed boobies live at sea and islands off the western coast of central and south America.About half of all booby pairs live on the Galgos islands which are a group of islands about 600 miles away from mainland Ecuador.

There isn't just the blue footed booby there are nazca, brown and red footed boobies.



Here is a picture of a Red footed booby.

I got it off google images.

Mating

During mating season the mail boobies wave their feet around to attract the females. Females normally pick the male with the most striking blue feet. When the mating ritual happens blue footed boobies swing their legs in a circular motion while walkin around the females. When male Boobies are ready to mate there feet go a lighter shade of blue. Males do everything they can so that the females will notice their feet. In the mating ritual the male and female both dance around together with the bill's pointed to they sky and the male flaps his wings in and out, the male also bring materials for a nest. The couple don't make much of a nest the female just lays one to three eggs in a hole.


Blue footed boobies generally live together in big colonies and each pair of boobies generally have a brood which is their child. When the egges are layed both parents keep the egg's warm by standing over them with their feet.

When the egg's hatch the chicks must stay close to their parents because boobies don't retrieve chicks that go astray. The parents will feed and protect their chicks until they are two months old, by then the the young boobies can look after themselves and start the cycle again.

here is a short video of a male booby doing the mating dancing showing off his feet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCNQFantLME

Characteristics of the booby

The blue footed boobies are found off the the eastern pacific ocean to the galápagos islands andf California.

In this post i will talk to you about the characteristics of the bird.

The blue footed booby has a long neck and long and sharp bill. There feet are bright blue, and obviously that's where they get their name from. The blue footed booby is a little under three foot tall and it's wingspan can go up to 5 feet long.

I got this picture from national geographic:

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/blue-footed-booby.html

Introduction

Hello my name is shane
I am doing my blog on blue footed boobies which are a bird from the Galapagos islands.