Sula dactylatra

The blue-faced booby is a black and white booby. It is larger than the red-footed boobies and brown boobies. Most of the feathers on the body are white except for the flight feathers and tail feathers. The eyes are golden yellow and the areas around the eyes are blue-black. The beak is long, thick and pointed, cone-shaped, the wings are relatively long and narrow, and the legs are thick and short. The feathers on its body are all white, the flight feathers are black, and the tail feathers are 14, wedge-shaped, and also black. The characteristics of the adult bird are white forehead and wing coverts, white back, and white head with black markings. The young bird is like a brown boobies but has a white collar, lighter brown upper body, and horizontal spots under the wings. It is different from the white tail feathers of the red-footed boobies, and the colors of its beak, face, eyes and feet are also different from the red-footed boobies. The male bird's beak is bright yellow, and th

Distributed in American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba, Brazil, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Chile, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Colombia, Comoros, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Cameroon, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kiribati, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Federated States of Micronesia, Montserrat, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Oman, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Pitcairn, Puerto Rico, Saint Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan - Cunha, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Martin (French), St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Sint Maarten (Dutch), Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sr

The Masked Booby is a black and white booby with 6 subspecies.

Except for the breeding season, the blue-faced booby spends most of its time at sea. They are good at flying and swimming, often flying in small groups over the sea or swimming on the sea. Sometimes they fly far from the coast in search of food. They mainly feed on various fish, especially flying fish, and also eat squid and crustaceans.

Blue-faced boobies are very good at catching fish. They fly 30 meters above the water (sometimes even 100 meters). Once they find a fish they like, they fold their wings, head down, and splash into the blue sea like a meteor. They dive into the water at a speed of 97 kilometers per hour. The huge sound produced when entering the water can stun fish swimming about 1.5 meters below the water surface. At this time, the boobies dive into the water at lightning speed, use their wings and webbed feet to paddle the water, and swim quickly in the water to find food. Once the booby bites the fish, it swallows it underwater and then floats to the surface. In order to resist the strong impact, the head of the blue-faced booby has become very hard and the neck is particularly thick. Of course, every time it enters the water, it is life-threatening. If the position and angle are not good, the neck will be broken and die.

Blue-faced boobies nest in large and flat capes and islands, nesting together in groups. They are highly territorial, and usually each small group occupies a nesting area of more than 50 square meters. Each nest lays two eggs. Usually, the second egg is laid about 6 days after the first egg is laid. Therefore, when the second egg hatches, the chick hatched from the first egg has grown quite large. If it develops normally, it will almost occupy most of the food, making the chick hatched from the second egg unable to survive. Sometimes the chick born first will desperately peck the chick born later and arch the latter out of the shade formed by the wings of the adult bird; the chick born later will die in a short time under the scorching sun. Therefore, only when the first egg fails to hatch or the chick hatched from the first egg fails to survive, the chick hatched from the second egg has the opportunity to grow and develop normally.

The mother booby does not stop the behavior of the big chick, but takes a tacit attitude. After the small chick dies, the mother booby will only feed the big chick next time. In extremely harsh natural conditions and with extremely scarce food, the father booby often has to fly hundreds of miles to catch fish in the sea to feed the little booby with a big appetite for three months. The father booby does not have the ability to provide for two little birds; and for the sake of insurance, the father and mother booby lay two eggs at a time to prevent all the treasures from hatching out of one egg, so the later-born chicks serve as spare tires; if the big chicks are fine, then the spare tire mission of the little chicks will also end.

The incubation period is usually about 43 days. The chicks are late-maturing, and although they grow quickly, their weight is close to that of adult birds at 1.5-2 months, but they cannot fly yet. It will take about 4 months for their wings to grow and leave the nest to fly. After four months, the booby's parents stop feeding it, and the young bird must learn to fly and hunt for food within ten days, because the fat in its body can only support it for ten days. If it can avoid the attack of the seal, if it can successfully learn to fly and swim, if it can learn to dive from the air without breaking its neck, if it can survive the season of food shortage, then this booby will have the opportunity to join other boobies, form a three-dimensional sea and air fishing team with dolphins, seals, sharks, and Bryde's whales, and attack as many as 500 million sardines, and panic those sardines that migrate northward along the cold current of southern Africa to the vicinity of Durban, so as to enjoy a feast.

Listed in the "Red List of Threatened Species of the World Conservation Union" (IUCN) 2018 ver 3.1-Least Concern (LC).

Listed in China's "National Key Protected Wildlife List" (February 5, 2021) Level 2.

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