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Masked Booby

A species of Boobies, Also known as White Booby
Scientific name : Sula dactylatra Genus : Boobies

Masked Booby, A species of Boobies
Also known as:
White Booby
Botanical name: Sula dactylatra
Genus: Boobies
Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra) Photo By Coracias garrulus , used under CC-BY-SA-3.0 /Cropped and compressed from original

Description

The largest species of booby, the masked booby ranges from 75 to 85 cm (30 to 33 in) long, with a 160–170 cm (63–67 in) wingspan and 1.2–2.2 kg (2.6–4.9 lb) weight. It has a typical sulid body shape, with a long pointed bill, long neck, aerodynamic body, long slender wings and pointed tail. The adult is bright white with dark wings and a dark tail. The sexes have similar plumage with no seasonal variation, but females are on average slightly heavier and larger than males. The bare skin around the face, throat and lores is described either as black or blue-black. It contrasts with the white plumage and gives a mask-like appearance. The bill of the nominate subspecies is pale yellow with a greenish tinge, sometimes greyish at the base. Conical in shape, the bill is longer than the head and tapers to a slightly downcurved tip. Backward-pointing serrations line the mandibles. The primaries, secondaries, humerals and rectrices are brown-black. The inner webs of the secondaries are white at the base. The underwing is white except for the brown-black flight-feathers that are not covered by the white coverts. The legs are yellow-orange or olive. The iris is yellow. The subspecies differ slightly in size and sometimes also in the colour of the irises, bill, legs and feet. The race melanops has an orange-yellow bill and olive-grey legs, the race tasmani has dark brown irises and dark grey-green legs and the race personata has olive to blueish-grey legs. For the subspecies tasmani and the nominate dactylatra, during the breeding season, the leg colour of male birds contains more yellow-red than those of the females. The juvenile is a streaked or mottled grey-brown on the head and upperparts, with a whitish neck collar. The wings are dark brown and underparts are white. Its bill is yellowish, face is blue-grey and iris a dark brown. Older immature birds have a broader white collar and rump, and more and more white feathers on the head until the head is wholly white by 14 to 15 months of age. Full adult plumage is acquired three to four months before the bird turns three years old. The masked booby is usually silent at sea, but is noisy at the nesting colonies. The main call of male birds is a descending whistle; that of females is a loud honk. The adult masked booby is distinguished from the related Nazca booby by its yellow rather than orange bill, larger size and less distinctive sexual dimorphism. The latter nests on steep cliffs rather than flat ground. The white morph of the red-footed booby is similar but smaller. Abbott's booby (Papasula abbotti) has a more wholly black upperwing, and a longer neck and tail and larger head, while the Cape gannet (Morus capensis) and the Australasian gannet (Morus serrator) have a buff-yellow crown, shorter tail, white humerals and a grey rather than yellowish bill. The juvenile masked booby resembles the brown booby (Sula leucogaster), though adults of that species have clearly demarcated brown and white plumage.
Size
66-86 cm (26-34 in)
Life Expectancy
15 years
Nest Placement
Ground
Clutch Size
1 - 2 eggs
Feeding Habits
Masked Booby primarily consume fish and squid, captured via impressive dives ranging from 12 to 100 meters above sea level, often swallowing prey underwater. Their diet includes flying fish, jacks, and small tuna. They forage extensively, sometimes over 100 km from colonies, and may also opportunistically feed with storm and Bulwer's petrels, though frigatebirds may steal their catch.
Habitat
Masked Booby predominantly inhabit tropical marine environments, preferring to nest in colonies on oceanic islands and atolls that have flat terrain with minimal to no vegetation. These birds thrive at sea level along coastlines and islets, steering clear of densely vegetated areas, unlike some of their relatives. Masked Booby have adapted to life in a wide range of tropical waters, often seen resting on man-made structures like buoys and oil platforms when not foraging across vast stretches of open ocean in pursuit of food.
Nest Behavior
Masked Booby engages in basic nest construction, with males presenting items to females for the nest edges. Egg-laying and parental care specifics remain undisputed, yet typical seabird patterns suggest a shared incubation and chick-rearing responsibility.
Nest Characteristics
Masked Booby's nests are ground scrapes typically located in vegetation-sparse zones, circled with sticks, pebbles, and assorted debris. These nests span roughly 20 inches across.
Dite type
Piscivorous

General Info

Behavior

Masked Booby's daily life centers around their social and breeding rituals within colonies. Males perform courtship displays involving neck stretching and high-stepping to attract mates, with pairs often reuniting each season through mutual preening. Both parents partake in incubation and chick-rearing, vigorously defending their territory with pecking and wing-flapping, issuing head-shaking warnings before escalating to potentially injurious attacks. Young masked Booby, not yet of breeding age, gather in communal groups away from nesting sites. Their strong territorial instincts are balanced by the interdependence seen in shared parental responsibilities and social interactions within their dedicated nesting areas.

Distribution Area

The masked booby is found across tropical oceans between the 30th parallel north and 30th parallel south. In the Indian Ocean it ranges from the coastlines of the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa across to Sumatra and Western Australia, though it is not found off the coast of the Indian subcontinent. Off the Western Australian coastline it is found as far south as the Dampier Archipelago. In the Pacific, it ranges from Brisbane eastwards. It is found in the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean south to Ascension Island. In the eastern Pacific off the coast of Colombia and Ecuador, the masked booby is replaced by the Nazca booby. A vagrant was rescued in 2015 in Newport, Oregon. In the Atlantic, Caribbean birds occasionally wander north to warm southern Gulf Stream waters off the eastern seaboard of the United States, with single records from Island Beach in New Jersey and New York. There are summer records from Delaware Bay, and Worcester County, Maryland, as well as waters off the coast of Spain. During the monsoon season (midyear), the masked booby is an occasional vagrant along the western coast of India, with records from Kerala, Karnataka, and Maharashtra states. It is a vagrant to the Caroline Islands north of New Guinea.

Species Status

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the masked booby as a species of least concern, though the population worldwide is decreasing. At Clipperton Island, the colony was benefitted by the presence of yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares), which drove their prey item—flying fish—to the surface, facilitating predation by boobies. It may be that overfishing of tuna adversely impacts the availability of fish there. In 2005, 508 young masked boobies at the colony suffered from "angel wing", a congenital deformity of one or both wings resulting in flightlessness. This coincided with a season of high nestling mortality that was likely related to low numbers of yellowfin tuna due to possible overfishing at a crucial time in the breeding season. The warm phase (El Niño) of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation in 1982 and 1983 negatively impacted breeding on Christmas Island as the higher water temperatures reduced food supply. Where usually 1500 pairs nested, no young were observed over this period; 50–60 pairs were observed breeding in October 1983. The Australian government has rated both subspecies occurring in Australian waters as vulnerable to climate change. The low-lying colonies of subspecies personata are at risk from rising sea levels, and the rising sea temperatures are calculated to reduce food productivity, which may impact on breeding success of both subspecies.
Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra) Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra) Photo By Coracias garrulus , used under CC-BY-SA-3.0 /Cropped and compressed from original

Scientific Classification

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