It’s extremely rare to see a brown booby along the coast of Washington state. It’s even rarer to see one hitchhiking on the top of a mast of a sailboat entering the Edmonds marina.
Lynnwood birder Josh Adams joined birder Joe Sweeney at the marina on Aug. 21. Adams has seen parasitic jaegers, harlequin ducks (rare), storm petrels, and shearwaters but it’s safe to say that a booby wasn’t on his radar.
He noticed “an odd bird” far offshore. They watched it with spotting scopes, losing and re-locating it a few times before it flew in their general direction.
Finally the booby headed directly towards their location, then turned south and passed by the fishing pier at a distance of several hundred yards, Adams said. That allowed Sweeney to take photographs and Adams to concentrate on the field marks.
“It was exciting to have the field marks confirm it. I was pretty overjoyed,” Adams said.
After hours of scanning the area, Adams and Sweeney left. Adams posted the sighting on a birders site, which brought other birders, including Blair Bernson, to see if they could find the booby and check it off their life list.
John Puschock later relocated the juvenile female sitting on the mast of a sailboat about 1 ½ miles out, a sailboat that was heading in the general direction of the Port of Edmonds.
“It’s remarkable that John could see it that far away,” Bernson said. “You could barely tell it was a bird.”
Bernson and others were getting ready to leave their vantage point on Sunset.
“But it was, ‘Oh my God, that’s the booby (and) the sailboat might be coming back to the marina’,” Bernson said.
They scrambled to get to the marina when the sailboat came into moorage around the breakwater, headed to its slip, the booby staying aboard the entire time.
“Just as we got there, the boat comes right by the pier with the booby still on the mast. It was unbelievable, like special delivery,” Bernson said. “It was truly astonishing. I’ve had many years of wonderful birding experiences but this was probably the most amazing.”
It was a shot of adrenaline for the birders.
“I had to smile. I mean, seriously, it came in on this boat?”
Sadly, Adams and Sweeney missed the show, having left before the before the booby’s hitchhiking act.
“I admit to being jealous,” Adams said.
“A brown booby is a Code 5 bird for Snohomish County,” said birder Carol Riddell. “That means there have been fewer than five sightings.”
The sighting probably will be reviewed for its authenticity by the Washington Bird Records Committee.
“The brown booby is a big deal for Edmonds, for Snohomish County, and for Washington,” she said.
Bernson had an interesting view on the booby episode.
“To me, one of the really important elements, maybe the most important, is Joe Sweeney’s commitment. He finished the master birder class of Seattle Audubon and made it a point, for several months now, to keep a vigil at the Edmonds fishing pier for at least two hours every Monday, Wednesday and Friday,” Bernson said.
“It brings out how, with diligence and commitment, you can see things that come by that we might not see (on periodic visits),” he said.
For birders, seeing a brown booby is exciting but to see it on the top of a sailboat mast, nearby, is like winning the avian lottery.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
Brown Booby
A seabird of tropical waters whose northern range usually ends at the Gulf of California.
Nests in colonies on islands, the only ground-nesting booby that regularly builds a substantial nest.
Has webbing connecting all four toes.
Length 25-34 inches
Wingspan 52-61 inches
Weight 34-64 inches
Eats squid and fish, especially flying fish. Feeds in areas where predatory fish such as tuna drives smaller fish to the surface.
Plunge-dives from heights of up to 50 feet, going to as much as 6 feet deep.
No longer breeds on many tropical islands where predators have been introduced.
— Source: Cornell Lab of Ornithology
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