The Story
This Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster) perched on rugged rock at Isla Terrón de Azúcar, a small rock island off Capurganá in Chocó, Colombia, which I reached by fishing boat in open Caribbean water. Brown Boobies nest only on the ground and roost on solid objects like this rock rather than on the water. Males have a blue ring of bare skin around the eye and females a yellow one, and females reach about 80 centimeters long, with wingspans up to 1.5 meters. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I made this frame with a Canon R5 and the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender, at 1/750 sec, f/16, ISO 800, −0.5 EV. Capurganá can be reached only by boat or small plane, and it has no cars, which keeps the village and its forest edges quiet for birds like this one.
©2025 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster) belongs to the family Sulidae (Boobies and Gannets) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2018), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List