Blue-footed Booby

The blue-footed booby is a large seabird found along the Pacific coasts of Central and South America, most famously on the Galapagos Islands, instantly recognizable for its bright blue webbed feet, which play a central role in an elaborate high-stepping courtship dance used to attract mates, with brighter blue feet signaling better health and diet. It has brown-and-white plumage and a long, sharp bill adapted for catching fish, which it hunts using spectacular high-speed plunge dives from heights of up to twenty metres directly into the ocean. Blue-footed boobies nest in loose colonies on the ground on rocky or sandy coasts, and siblings in the same brood sometimes compete aggressively for food, occasionally leading to the stronger chick outcompeting or even killing a weaker one. The species remains a major draw for wildlife tourism in the Galapagos, though some populations have fluctuated with changes in the availability of the small fish it depends on.