Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Masked Booby


Masked Booby, Sula dactylatra
George Island, St. Helena, South Atlantic

This is from Wikipedia : The Masked Booby, Sula dactylatra, is a large seabird of the gannet family, Sulidae. This species breeds on islands in tropical oceans, except in the eastern Atlantic; in the eastern Pacific it is replaced by the Nazca Booby, Sula granti, which was formerly regarded as a subspecies of Masked Booby (Pitman & Jehl 1998, Friesen et al. 2002).

A conspicuous and distinct gannet-like species, it was proposed for separation in a monotypic subgenus Pseudosula, but the Nazca Booby and as it seems also the Brown Booby (S. leucogaster) is a quite close relative.

1 comment:

Herandlab said...

Beautiful bird! I love birds!!!