Unbelievable! We left the Galapagos for several weeks, some of us traveled as far as the Pacific Northwest, and everywhere people were asking about the strange case of one bird adopting a chick of a different species. A fellow naturalist, who lives in Canada, and who has been coming to Galapagos for 20 years, received us in Victoria, and anxiously asked: "How are they doing? I mean Fabio, the booby and Andrea, the frigate?" At Lindblad Expeditions' office in Seattle everyone wanted to hear details about these birds from the Tower Island. I have received letters from Washington D.C, Tampa, and England asking about the booby and frigate pair.
Things seem pretty normal at their nest. The frigate is growing well. Neighbor masked boobies are rearing their chicks, also. Most of the chicks are now between 7 and 10 weeks old. Masked boobies lay two eggs but raise only one young. The oldest sibling kills the younger one by pushing it out of the nest. This happens a few days after the second one hatches, and is called "siblicide."
Today I did a survey for the Charles Darwin Station and counted all the masked boobies on Prince Philip's Steps, Tower Island. There were 28 nests with eggs or hatchlings, 41 nests with downy chicks, 2 nests with downy chicks with black feathers and 119 adult birds that were not nesting. But I had a little problem doing my census. I didn't know how to tally the masked booby with a downy frigate chick that is beginning to grow in its first black feathers!
