BOOBIES 
Flying at a height of fifty feet or more, a flock of five hundred pale brown 
boobies sights a school of fish and dives headlong into the sea, descending 
like a sheet of rain; where a moment before the sky had been clouded with 
birds, there remains only the foaming spray raised by their plunge. The 
wings stay open until just before striking the water and then close quickly. 
According to Evans boobies are frequently caught by sailors, who place 
fish as bait on floating pieces of wood. So violently does the bird plunge 
that its beak rams fast into the wood. 
Parties of these birds often travel in single file. But when flocks are 
large, they travel three or four abreast, passing overhead at a rate of 
about three hundred a minute. They fly with outstretched necks and wings 
extended. 
In America boobies are found along the shores of tropical South 
America and throughout the West Indies. Their enemies are man-o-war 
birds, who steal their catch, and crabs, who steal their eggs. 
The booby makes no elaborate nest, but places its eggs in a makeshift 
structure of sticks, stones or dried sea-weed, placed on the ledge of a high 
cliff. Usually one of their two or three eggs does not hatch out, and the 
natives of the Cape Verde Islands are said to have based an extensive 
gambling game on this unusual fact. They bet on which egg is the dud, 
marking the eggs to identify them. 
The young are born without a single feather, but their feathers aie 
quick to grow. Three months after leaving the egg, the chicks take flight. 
The nestlings eat squids and fish, which they obtain by pushing their beaks 
into the gullets of their parents. 
Boobies seem to possess a high degree of social responsibility. An 
injured bird will often be fed by members of the flock until it is well. This 
care of the disabled is also observed among the man-o-war birds. 
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