Red-footed Booby

About the Red-footed Booby

The red-footed booby (Sula sula) is a large seabird of the booby family, Sulidae. Adults always have red feet, but the colour of the plumage varies. They are powerful and agile fliers, harnessing the wind to fly efficiently, but they are clumsy in takeoffs and landings. They forage by catching flying fish from above the ocean's surface and by performing shallow dives. They are found widely in the tropics, and breed colonially in coastal regions, especially isolated islands such as St. Brandon, Mauritius (Cargados Carajos shoals), and the Chagos Archipelago. Although its population is declining, it is considered to be a least-concern species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It faces threats from climate change, competition with fisheries, human disturbance, and invasive species.

The red-footed booby was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1766, in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae. He gave it the binomial name Pelecanus sula and described it based on a specimen from Barbados. The present genus Sula was introduced by the French scientist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. The word Sula is Norwegian for a gannet... Wikipedia →