Blue-Footed Booby

‘There are about 20,000 breeding pairs of blue-footed boobies, the most common type of booby in the Galápagos,’ says Fernando Diez, marketing manager at Quasar Expeditions. You can’t miss their pretty blue feet, which come from the carotenoid pigments in the fish they eat.

And what about the rest of the name, ‘booby’? According to Diez, it comes from the Spanish word ‘bobo,’ meaning foolish, because the bird’s waddle is a bit clumsy on land. But when it comes to flying and swimming, well, they can dive from 80 feet above the ocean when hunting prey.