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Fw: that booby at Ocracoke (revised)



All,

I heard from John Weske this evening and he forwarded this report on the
booby @ Ocracoke.

Jim O'Donnell  (odjljl@ncnets.net)
Onslow County N.C.


> Please forward this message to Carolina Birds to set the record
straight--I can't get on directly.  The sulid we saw on Beacon Island
last Friday afternoon, 18 July, was most certainly a Masked Booby a.k.a.
Blue-faced Booby.  The only reason the "blue-footed" business came up at
all is that I was stumbling for the other name for besides Masked.  This
is the same species that I saw 10-15 years ago in the Cape Fear River
when one was hanging out in the tern colony on Ferry Slip Island.
>
> Observers were Micou M. Browne, Peter Hertl, Lindsay Nester, Meredith
Bell, and myself.  I did not write down notes on this Beacon I. bird a
week ago, but here's what we saw.  (By the way, this island with its
pelican colony is protected by Audubon, and one must have permission to
land).  There's a small muddy indentation or beach facing Ocracoke
village toward the south end of the island.  The booby was standing
there alone-- it was not up in the grass with the pels.  It was a white
bird with black in the wings and with black on the face surrounding the
base of the bill.  It was decidedly smaller than a gannet, which I've
seen repeatedly and have handled in Newfoundland.  There was on the head
none of the buffy color found in Gannets (breeding plumage, anyhow).
The bird was quite tame, and I approached it, wondering if it was sick
and undecided about making an attempt to catch it.  (I had a large
landing net in my hand.)  We once had a sick or weak Common Loon at this
very spot.  The booby took flight, however, a downwind take-off that
required a lot of running along the water until it finally did get
airborne 50-100 yds offshore.  The black flight feathers including black
secondaries were apparent.  I also noted some black among the white of
the wing coverts, and this leads me to believe the bird was sub-adult.
We looked at Peterson when we got back to shore, and of course the
flight picture there shows the wing coverts to be completely white.
>
> This is not the first off-beat bird I've seen on the Ocracoke Inlet
islands.  We ran into a Flamingo on North Rock during one visit in the
1980's.
>
> John S. Weske
>
>
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