See how beautifully colour coordinated these Blue-footed Boobies are.
Blue feet and blue beaks. And it looks like they're singing the old hokey-pokey song: You pick your right foot up. You put your right foot down. You pick your left foot up, and you raise it way up high.
The birds are seabirds called blue-footed boobies. No surprise how they got the first part of their name! They got the “booby” part from long-ago Spanish explorers, who called them bobos, which means “dummies.” The birds weren’t used to humans and so showed no fear of them. The explorers thought that was foolish behavior, because it made the birds so easy to catch for dinner.
Blue feet are neat for providing heat! That’s why the parent booby above wraps its wide, webbed feet around its eggs. Finally, a nearly naked chick breaks out of one of the eggs.
Blue-footed boobies live along the Pacific coast, from southern North America down to northern South America. Usually, the birds are out at sea, fishing. But when they come ashore to breed, it's time for blue foots on parade.
