Yesterday I posted a photo diary of Boobies (not that kind) and some sunsets. In the body of the diary I had a photo of a light headed booby I thought might be an adolescent brown booby.
matching mole wrote the following:
"I believe that the 'mystery booby' that you think might be a juvenile is actually a male of the eastern Pacific subspecies of brown boody, Sula leucogaster brewsteri. Males of brewsteri have a whitish head while females and juveniles have brown heads as is the case with both sexes of other races of brown boobies."
Here is the Booby in question:
Here is our usual Brown Booby:
I today I did some searching on the Inter-tube-nets and found this interesting paper on the distribution of Brewster's Brown Boobies (and Nazca Boobies) by Eric VanderWerf and others. I emailed the author the photo and got this response:
"Yes, you are right (actually matching mole was right, not me), that is a Brewster's Brown Booby. More specifically, based on the large amount of white that extends well down the neck, it appears to be of the nesiotes subspecies, which breeds on Clipperton Island.
The blue facial skin indicates it is a male."
So here's to matching mole for the most excellent identification job on the booby.
Clipperton Island is a small atoll 1,280 km SW of Acapulco and 5,000 km from where I took the photo here in Hawaii.
That is my booby update.
To change topics from boobies, I took a walk this afternoon with the big lens and captured the following photos of some of our local featherbutts.
Red-Crested Cardinal Paroaria coronata
Zebra Dove Geopelia striata
Red-Vented Bulbul Pycnonotus cafer
Red-Whistered Bulbul Pycnonotus jocosus
Common Waxbill Estrilda astrild
House Sparrow Passer domesticus
House Finch Carpodacus mexicanus
Japanese White-Eye Zosterops japonicus
and finally, the only species in the diary (other than the boobies) that was not brought here by humans, the Pacific Golder Plover or Kolea Pluvialis fulva
Thanks for being here. Sorry if you were disappointed by the boobies.
Aloha!