Figure 74. This first-fall Blue-footed Booby—photographed in October 1976 at New Hogan Reservoir—is celebrated for giving northern California its only inland record of a booby, as well as for providing Calaveras County its only CBRC-reviewed record of any species (1987-071; Jeri M. Langham).

Figure 75. Distribution of 81 Blue-footed Boobies accepted from 1972 through 2003. The Salton Sea area accounts for 71, including totals of 45 birds in 1972 and 11 in 1977. The northerly outliers consist of a winter record from Pt. Saint George, Del Norte County, a fall record from San Francisco, San Francisco County, and the Calaveras County record discussed at left (see Figure 74).

Figure 76. Blue-footed Boobies stage irregular and increasingly infrequent post-breeding-season invasions of the Salton Sea. The largest such event on record, involving at least 45 birds, occurred in 1972. This species can usually survive the harsh Salton Sea summer, but these sketches (reduced from the original size) record for posterity an individual found dead on 24 August 1972 at the mouth of the Whitewater River, Riverside County (1973-036; Tim Manolis).

 

Figures 202, 203 (top color, bottom). In October 1969, three years before the CBRC started reviewing Blue-footed Booby records, 32 of these gregarious birds turned up at the Salton Sea along with eight Brown Boobies. These photographs were taken during that month at Salton City in Imperial County. The image at left shows five Blue-footeds and a Brown (1984-090; Ron LeValley); below is a lone Blue-footed (Herbert Clarke).

 

 

 

 

BLUE-FOOTED BOOBY Sula nebouxii Milne-Edwards, 1882

Accepted: 82 (90%)	Treated in Appendix H: no
Not accepted: 9	CBRC review: records from 1972 through present1
Not submitted/reviewed: 1	Large color images: see figures

This booby nests in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, including colonies on the Galapagos Islands and several islands in the Gulf of California. The species occurs casually along the Pacific coast of the Baja California Peninsula, in southwestern Arizona, and in southern Nevada; accidental records come from Oregon, Washington, and Texas. An exceptional count of 37 was tallied on 21 November 1971 at the Islas Los Coronados in northwestern Baja California (Garrett and Dunn 1981).

California’s first Blue-footed Booby was photographed at the north end of the Salton Sea, Riverside County, 1–11 November 1929 (Clary 1930). Four years later, on 1 November 1933, the state’s first specimen was obtained at Big Bear Lake, San Bernardino County (Edge 1934, SBCM 30910). This and all other specimens refer to S. n. nebouxii, which breeds in the Gulf of California. For the past two decades, Blue-footed Boobies have been encountered in coastal California less frequently than Masked, Red-footed, and especially Brown Boobies (see those accounts and Erickson and Terrill 1996). Two apparent Blue-footed × Brown Boobies have been recorded in Sinaloa, Mexico (Castillo-Guerrero et al. 2005).

As described in McCaskie’s thorough review (1970e), California has hosted periodic influxes of Blue-footed Boobies—exceptionally 32 birds in 1969 and at least 45 in 1972 (see Winter and McCaskie 1975)—but most years lack records. More than 30 years have now passed since the last major incursion. Between 1972 and 2003, the Salton Sea area played host to seven out of every eight California occurrences (71 of 82; Figure 75). With rare exceptions, California’s records fall between 12 July and 18 October, suggesting that most involve post-breeding-season dispersants.

¹Off the review list 1974–1986