Sula leucogaster

#25 - BlipBigYear 2014

I was having a leisurely time of bagel-nomming and waterfront-strolling this morning when I get an urgent text message from B: "Adult brown booby @ n jetty NOW!"

Brown Booby?? NOW??

I called up J, who met me ten minutes later with his 4-wheel-drive so we could be-line it out to the north spit and bag this pelagic vagrant. Amazingly, it was still resting on the end of the jetty when we arrived, looking around and occasionally standing up to flap its tired tropical wings. A local birder found it around 10:40 this morning and it had gathered quite the crowd, despite hazardous surf splashing over the jetty (the scariest wave only drenched me to my shins). After gazing at her majesty for 20-30 minutes, the booby flapped her wings and took off north, and we watched as a 4th county record resumed her journey in the completely wrong direction.

Sad will I be when the semester resumes this week, for gratifying high-speed chases of this sort will have to come to an end.