All over the Maryland Birding Facebook page, birders were sharing photos of the elegant, tropical birds with the cartoonish feet and the white, penguin-like bellies. There were more than a dozen brown boobies, settling into Chesapeake Bay buoys as if moving into a condo, their yellow beaks popping out of the penthouse suite.
They had been here since the summer, always on the same buoys, far from their tropical homes in the Caribbean and South America. As a longtime chronicler of the Chesapeake Bay, I get excited about rare birds and how and why they arrive here. But often, I hear about a rare bird somewhere and go to find it and it’s not there. These birds were not only staying put; they were unfazed. Long lenses
leaning out of charter boats, large ships barreling through the channel, cormorants competing for fish — nothing seemed to bother them. They were the chillest, coolest birds I had ever seen.
I didn’t have to say much more than “brown booby” to generate interest in the newsroom. Saying the name made me giggle like a 13-year-old, but the booby comes by it honestly. Officially Sula leucogaster, the booby takes its moniker from the Spanish word “bobo,” which translates as foolish or half-witted. It comes from the birds’ tendency to stay in one place for a long time, often on a ship’s bow, the easier for the crew to catch it and eat it.
Oh yeah, totally going there:
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