Tuesday 3 January 2017

Ashmore Reef 06 -- Boobies

This next series of posts will each refer to a different family of birds. This post is about the Boobys. I have great trouble with the correct plural of Booby. Is it Boobys or Boobies? Of course, in pluralising a noun, you drop the 'y' and add 'ies'. Hence 'family' becomes 'families'. But 'Booby' is a proper name. Morcombe uses 'boobies' as does Slater.

Boobies

Whatever the PC spelling is, there were three species of Booby birds seen on the trip, some right from the word go.

Brown Booby Sula leucogaster

juvenile Brown Booby on East Island

Masked Booby Sula dactylatra



Red-footed Booby Sula sula




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