Blue-Footed Booby

The face of the Galapagos Islands may be the blue-footed booby. When I thought of the Galapagos Islands I thought of giant tortoises, marine iguanas and penguins, but I was looking forward to seeing the blue-footed bobbies as much or more than those others. When we saw our first boobies, as we were passing on a ferry between Baltra Island and Santa Cruz, there was a shout-out from someone on the ferry and quite a few of us rushed to the side of the ferry, pulled out our cameras and took photos.  

My first photo of this iconic bird.

We next encountered the booby at Moreno Point on Isabela. There were lots of them on some large rocks in the bay. I took lots of photos but they didn't turn out well. Here are several that are okay. 

Look at those blue feet!

There are two subspecies of blue-footed booby. One is found on the Pacific Coast of southern North America and South America and one is found in the Galapagos Islands. We some them next at Elizabeth Bay on a rock in the bay. 

These were photographed from our yacht. 

My next photo is a solo bird from Vincent Roca Point on Isabela. 

Santiago Island is where we hit the treasure trove for boobies. I was in a panga and our guide drove me right up to a booby on some rocks in the bay and I was taking photos of it looking right into my lens. It was amazing. I could have reached out and touched it. So uninhibited. 

My favorite photo of the booby. 

I also got some flying photos and was unsuccessful in getting photos of them traveling like spear-points into the water to catch fish. 

Some more fun booby photos from our ride around the shores of Santiago. The later photos were from an area where they were dive-bombing into the water. I didn't get any photos of them going in, but several of them just back up from the depths. These were my last booby photos.