Hi Marv,

Funny that you should mention that brown booby; just yesterday I thought I might possibly have glimpsed one flying toward Harbor Island, from about a 1/4 mile south of the West Seattle Bridge (Terminal 105). I told Kris when I got home, but didn't feel good enough about it for a posting. It was flying about 80 feet up, looked somewhat like a funny looking male common merganser; but it flew very leisurely, seemed too big, and the bill was thick and tapering to a point, with no hook. The head and neck were uniformly dark, but not black like a merganser; the contrast of light and dark was striking, but not as in a male common merganser. I didn't get a good look at the back or the top of the wings. It was in the late morning, around 10. It was striking enough for me to run downriver for a better look; no mere merganser, I thought. I never got another look. In the afternoon I searched again, without success. I used to see nesting brown boobies close up when I worked in Honduras years ago.

Kevin Li
Ballard, USA
kdli at msn.com