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Red-footed Booby

 
Red Footed Booby

 
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Red-footed Booby
 
 
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The Red-footed Booby, Sula sula, is a large seabird
Seabird

Seabirds are birds that have adaptation to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behavior and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same environmental problems and feeding ecological niche have resulted in similar adaptations....
 of the gannet
Gannet

Gannets are seabirds in the family Sulidae, closely related to the Booby.The gannets are large black and white birds, with long pointed wings and long bills....
 family, Sulidae
Sulidae

The bird family Sulidae comprises the gannets and booby. Both groups are medium-large coastal seabirds that plunge-dive for fish. The species in this family are often considered congeneric, placing all in the genus Sula....
. They are powerful and agile fliers, but they are clumsy in takeoffs and landings.

Red-footed Booby is the smallest of all boobies
Booby

The Booby, a type of seabird, is part of the Family Sulidae and the genus Sula. It is closely related to the gannets , which were often included in Sula in former times....
 at 71 cm in length and with a 137 cm wingspan. It has red legs, and its bill and throat pouch are coloured pink and blue. This species has two plumage forms. The white phase is mostly white with black on the flight feathers.






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The Red-footed Booby, Sula sula, is a large seabird
Seabird

Seabirds are birds that have adaptation to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behavior and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same environmental problems and feeding ecological niche have resulted in similar adaptations....
 of the gannet
Gannet

Gannets are seabirds in the family Sulidae, closely related to the Booby.The gannets are large black and white birds, with long pointed wings and long bills....
 family, Sulidae
Sulidae

The bird family Sulidae comprises the gannets and booby. Both groups are medium-large coastal seabirds that plunge-dive for fish. The species in this family are often considered congeneric, placing all in the genus Sula....
. They are powerful and agile fliers, but they are clumsy in takeoffs and landings.

Description

The Red-footed Booby is the smallest of all boobies
Booby

The Booby, a type of seabird, is part of the Family Sulidae and the genus Sula. It is closely related to the gannets , which were often included in Sula in former times....
 at 71 cm in length and with a 137 cm wingspan. It has red legs, and its bill and throat pouch are coloured pink and blue. This species has two plumage forms. The white phase is mostly white with black on the flight feathers. The brown form is brown with a white belly, rump, and tail. Both forms may occur sympatrically, as in the breeding colony on St. Giles Island, Tobago
Tobago

Tobago is the smaller of the two main islands that make up the Trinidad and Tobago. It is located in the southern Caribbean Sea, northeast of the island of Trinidad and southeast of Grenada....
.

The sexes are similar, and young birds are greyish with browner wings and pink legs.

Breeding

This species breeds on islands in most tropical oceans. It winters
Bird migration

Bird migration refers to the regular seasonal journeys undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather....
 at sea, and is therefore rarely seen away from breeding colonies. It nests in large colonies, laying one chalky blue egg in a stick nest in a tree, which is incubated by both adults for 44-46 days. It may be three months before the young first fly, and five months before they make extensive flights.

Red-footed Booby pairs may remain together over several seasons. They perform elaborate greeting rituals, including harsh squawks and the male’s display of his blue throat.

Diet

Red-footed Boobies are spectacular divers, plunging into the ocean at high speeds to catch prey. They mainly eat small fish
Fish

A fish is any marine biology vertebrate animal that is typically ectothermic , covered with scale , and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins....
 or squid
Squid

Squid are marine cephalopods of the order Teuthida, which comprises around 300 species. Like all other cephalopods, squid have a distinct head, Symmetry #Bilateral_symmetry, a mantle , and cephalopod arms....
 which gather in groups near the surface.

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