I couldn't resist, grabbed paddle and boat, and went over to Protection
Island this evening. The booby reported earlier is there as of 5:15 pm
Saturday and looked settled for the evening. It was on a ledge above the
large rock and stump, about 50 feet above the water. Earlier it was on the
rock which is roughly at the middle of the south shore. It also spent time
flying around looking for food.

The water was a bit bouncy and this is the first booby for me so I might
have missed something. But it looked for all the world to be an adult
eastern form Brown Booby based upon the illustrations and description in
the Nat Geo guide. The bill and feet were a pale yellow, and the head,
neck, back, wing tops, wing bottom edges, and breast were dark brown. The
wing linings were white. I didn't see the blue at the base of the bill and
thought there was a very little patch of white (about the same size and
shape as the blue is drawn in the guide) at the base of the bill. Bobbing
around while trying to see head details as the bird flys by at 50 yards is
tricky, so the lack of blue and possible white patch are suspect.

I would love to have another look just to qualm the sudden self doubt.
>From the back the bird was completely dark. It seems mighty weird that it
would be here and even more so that it would be an eastern form. Could
this be a ship assisted bird as someone described previously? Oh the tale
that bird could tell!

At 07:08 AM 10/18/97 -0800, Peter Badame wrote:
>Tweeters
>I just spoke with the caretaker on Protection Island who confirmed sighting
>a(female?) brown booby at 3:30 pm on Protection Island on Friday 10/17/97.

Michael Kennedy <mkennedy at waypt.com>
Port Townsend, WA, USA