Masked booby
The masked booby is one of six species of booby in the genus Sula. The adult is bright white with black wings, a black tail and a dark face mask. The species ranges across tropical oceans, except in the eastern Atlantic and eastern Pacific. It is the only booby species in which the female lays two chalky white eggs in a shallow depression.
About Masked booby in brief
The masked booby is one of six species of booby in the genus Sula. It has a typical sulid body shape, with a long pointed yellowish bill, long neck, aerodynamic body, long slender wings and pointed tail. The adult is bright white with black wings, a black tail and a dark face mask. The species ranges across tropical oceans, except in the eastern Atlantic and eastern Pacific. Nesting takes place in colonies, generally on islands and atolls far from the mainland and close to deep water required for foraging. These birds are spectacular plunge divers, plunging into the ocean at high speed in search of prey. Although its population is declining, it is considered to be a least-concern species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A 2011 genetic study showed the masked and Nazca boobies to be each other’s closest relatives, diverging from a line that gave rise to the blue-footed booby and Peruvian booby. Subfossil evidence suggests they diverged between 0.8 and 1.1 million years ago, leading to speciation. The two species were formerly regarded as a subspecies of the former, but should be classified as a separate species of the booby, according to the International Ornithologists’ Union. It is the only booby species in which the female lays two chalky white eggs in a shallow depression on flat ground away from vegetation. The chicks are born featherless, but are soon covered in white down.
The second chick born generally does not survive and is killed by its elder sibling. The bird is also known as the masked gannet, blue-faced booby,. white booby, and whistling booby. The species name Sula dactylatra is derived from the Ancient Greek words cyanos, meaning blue, and ops, meaning face, and the Latin ater, meaning black. It was first described by the French naturalist René-Primevère Lesson in 1831, and is now the official common name by the IONU. It can be found in the wild in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South Africa and in the Indian Ocean in the South East of South America. The male and female have similar plumage, with the sexes having the same plumage. The birds are usually found in colonies on islands, far from mainland, and on atolls in the east and south-east of the Pacific. The female lays the eggs, which are usually in shallow depressions, on a sandy surface. The eggs hatch into chicks that are then killed by the male, who attacks the female to protect the nest. The males are usually born with white down, but the chicks are often born with black down, with black wingtips and black tail, and have a black face mask, as well as a yellow bill and a yellow neck. In the wild, the birds are known as Sula personata, which means “masked” or “white booby”
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This page is based on the article Masked booby published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
