Blue-Footed Booby in Galápagos: Facts and Where to See It

A blue-footed booby's feet get their colour from two sources: the collagen structure of the skin and carotenoid pigments from the fresh fish it eats. Because the pigment comes from food, the colour reports how well fed and healthy a bird is at that moment. In the 2006 study by Velando and colleagues, it changed within 48 hours.

• Diet. Males deprived of food in the study had duller feet within 48 hours. Re-fed with fresh fish, the same males turned a brighter blue again.
• A signal of health. The researchers call foot colour an "honest signal of current condition". A hungry or sick bird cannot fake bright feet.
• Female choice. The bluer the feet, the more attractive the male. When the researchers dulled males' feet with make-up, their partners laid smaller second eggs [VERIFY: Velando et al. 2006, abstract].

The blue-footed booby mating dance is the male's display of his feet to a female, always in the same 3 steps:

1. The male struts in front of the female, raising one blue foot and then the other.
2. Both birds stretch their necks and point their bills to the sky.
3. The male spreads his wings and whistles.

In the guide sighting records, the dance appears from June to August on the trail at North Seymour, which makes that trail in those 3 months the place to plan for it.

The female lays 2 to 3 eggs in a simple nest on the ground. Both parents take turns warming the eggs with their webbed feet, and hatching takes about 45 days. The chicks take fish from the parents' bills and stay with them for about two months. In Galápagos, breeding has been poor for years: Anchundia, Huyvaert and Anderson found few pairs nesting and linked this to a lack of sardines in the birds' diet.

Blue-footed booby habitat is the sea and the dry islands of the eastern Pacific, from the Gulf of California south to Peru and on Galápagos. The bird nests on open ground there and fishes in the nearby waters. Its diet is fish, and in Galápagos sardines and herring matter most for successful breeding.

To catch fish, it folds back its long wings and plunges into the water from as high as 80 feet, about 24 metres, according to National Geographic. In the Galápagos colonies, Anchundia, Huyvaert and Anderson found sardines and herring mostly missing from the diet, and poor breeding appears to be linked to it. At Punta Vicente Roca on Isabela, a Likely site visited by panga ride, the water around the boat is where a dive may happen.

Guide sighting records list blue-footed boobies at 11 visitor sites on 8 islands. 5 of them are rated Likely, with sightings on most visits: the North Seymour trail, Punta Suárez on Española, Punta Vicente Roca on Isabela, and Punta Pitt and Isla Lobos on San Cristóbal. The other 6 sites are rated Rare.

Likely means naturalist guides record them on most visits there. The ratings come from the guides' own visit records. [CHECK: the current page defines only "Likely". Add a definition of "Rare" only if the owner confirms one.]

Blue-footed boobies are in Galápagos in all 12 months, so no month of the year rules them out. The courtship dance falls in June to August, and a route that lands on North Seymour covers it. In the next twelve months, 312 departures in those 3 months stop at a site where they are seen. July sits in the middle of the dance season: Galápagos in July.

No. The blue-footed booby is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, with more than 90,000 mature birds worldwide. The global trend is decreasing, though, and the Galápagos population has fallen sharply: a survey in 2012 counted about 6,400 adults, against a rough estimate of 20,000 in the 1960s.

In Galápagos. According to National Geographic, the Galápagos population includes about half of all breeding pairs, so what happens on these islands matters for the whole species. The researchers behind the 2012 survey found few pairs breeding and linked this to diet: sardines and herring, the fish behind successful breeding, were mostly missing. The link is suggested, not proven, and the authors question the methods of both counts. Galápagos National Park rules set a distance of at least 2 metres (6 feet) from the birds, even when they come closer, and keep every visitor on the marked trails with a naturalist guide.

1. Not checking the route. Not every route stops at one of the 5 Likely sites, so the itinerary decides the odds.
2. Expecting the dance at any time. Guide sighting records place it in June to August, on North Seymour.
3. Planning around a Rare site. 6 of the 11 sites are rated Rare, so a sighting at one of them is a bonus, not a plan.
4. Getting too close. Park rules set at least 2 metres between visitors and wildlife, and that includes nesting birds that seem calm.