Natural Perspectives -- Vic Leipzig and Lou Murray

Vic Leipzig and Lou Murray

Cyberspace is humming over the recent sightings of boobies in Southern

California. But there is a mystery surrounding them.

Vic says he wants to make it perfectly clear that he’s not writing

this story. He swears that his interest in boobies is purely academic,

since he teaches bird watching at two local colleges. Yeah, whatever. If

you ask me, he seemed awfully excited by the peek that he got at one of

these rare boobies.

Vic tried to explain to me that boobies are cigar-shaped birds,

tapered at the head and tail, with disproportionately large bills. He

said that they fly on stiff wings with strong wing beats. Boobies spend

most of their lives on the ocean, where they dive headlong into the water

after fish from heights of 80 feet. Gee, Vic can even make boobies sound

dull.

These silly looking birds got their names from the word bobo, which is

Spanish for clown. There are several species of boobies, but the ones

that figure in this story are the masked and blue-footed boobies.

The masked booby is a white bird with dark wings and a dark mask

around the bill. It breeds mainly in the Galapagos Islands, but a

subpopulation breeds on islands off the coast of Western Mexico. This

subpopulation resembles the recently named Nazca boobies, which for all

practical purposes are slight color variations of masked boobies that

breed on a particular island in the Pacific.

The main feature of the blue-footed booby is, appropriately enough,

blue feet. During courtship, the male displays his pretty feet to the

female in a rather comical fashion, holding up first one, then the other

to show them off. The birds build an elaborate nest while they are

courting, only to tear it up when it comes time to lay the eggs, which

are laid on bare ground. These birds are apparently not too bright.

A couple of weeks ago, a sick sub-adult masked booby was reported in

La Jolla. Someone said that a large wave swept the bird into the ocean.

When the booby was next seen, its foot was bleeding. Additional reports

said that the bird headed our way, apparently following fishing boats.

Now the plot thickens. We received a call from the Wetlands and

Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach a few days after the masked

booby was swept off the rock in La Jolla. Animal Control officers had

brought in an injured booby that they had captured at Corona del Mar.

Naturally, Vic assumed it was the same booby. But when he saw the bird at

the Care Center, he realized that it was a different bird. It didn’t look

like the pictures he had seen of the masked booby from La Jolla. Vic

identified the bird at the Care Center as a second sub-adult masked

booby. Apparently there were two of these rare birds in Southern

California at the same time. However, other experts thought that the bird

at the Care Center might be an immature blue-footed booby, with the

remote possibility that it could be a Nazca booby. Hence the controversy.

Here’s what we do know. Wildlife Care Center Supervisor Debbie McGuire

said that the bird was too sick to eat when it arrived. Blood tests

showed that it was anemic; X-rays showed that it had swallowed a

fishhook. The bird was bleeding to death internally and was probably too

weak to survive surgery to remove the hook. Fortunately, the folks at the

Care Center were able to locate a vet in Tustin who had an endoscope.

This vet fished the hook out the same way it had gone down, with no need

for elaborate surgery. Further tests showed that the bird was loaded with

intestinal parasites, so it was wormed. The booby is now gobbling down

whole fish and is expected to make a full recovery.

Birders are flocking to the Care Center to get a peek at the bird, but

access is denied. One of the more difficult tasks of the volunteers at

the Wildlife Care Center is to protect the injured wildlife from an

adoring public. The goal is to avoid exciting the already stressed birds

and mammals, to help them recover, and to release them back to the wild

without the animals becoming accustomed to people. But they also want to

know for sure what kind of bird it is, so the bird has been measured and

photographed and DNA has been sent off for analysis. Soon we’ll be

certain of the identity of this rare visitor to our shores.

Actually, it is irrelevant to me whether the bird is a masked, Nazca

or blue-footed booby. I just hope it gets well and flies back to where it

belongs, whether that is the Galapagos or the islands off the coast of

Mexico. I hope it can find a mate and reproduce in the wild. Thanks to

the excellent quality veterinary care it is receiving, it should be able

to do so.

So let’s all say good luck to the goofy-looking bird with the big

honking beak and the funny name and wish it well when it flies away to

freedom and a future made possible by the good people at the Wildlife

Care Center.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at o7 [email protected] .