E25. The blue-footed booby has become an internet personality: cartoon feet, a goofy strut, a name that practically begs to be a punchline. But Scott sat down with Dr. Carlos Zavalaga, Universidad Científica del Sur, and one of the people who first taught him how to study seabirds in Peru, and the "fool" reputation falls apart fast. Get a booby in the air or underwater and you're watching one of the most specialized hunters in the bird family tree.

In this episode you'll hear about:

  • How six-plus booby species carve up the same ocean without starving each other out
  • What 20 years of GPS loggers, depth tags, and bags of fresh fish revealed about who eats what
  • Why El Niño, avian flu, and overfishing keep stacking the deck against these birds


All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

  • Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
  • Red-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85911
  • Brown Booby audio contributed by Gerritt Vyn, ML136211
  • Masked Booby audio contributed by Chandler Robbins, ML32604
  • Nazca Booby audio contributed by Oliver H. Hewitt, ML31543
  • Peruvian Booby audio contributed by Ted Parker, ML29399


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