This immature Brown Booby Sula leucogaster was spotted preening on the outrigger arm of a shrimp boat returning to port past the Quintana Jetty, Freeport, Brazoria county on August 19, 2008:
but though my bins (I had forgotten to pack my 'scope!)
the feet looked rather bright orange and I couldn't be sure that the underparts were evenly brown...
- so I drove back into the port area and eventually found the shrimper tied-up to a dilapidated dock; the booby was comfy on his hawser even though all but one pelican had flown away:
As you can see, it is a quite young individual with bright orangy-yellow feet (contra all field guides); something to think about when considering even rarer boobies...
- suddenly the boat workers started to winch up the outrigger; the booby was very reluctant to fly, and scrambled up the hawser :
- but eventually it was forced to fly; it seemed to be able to fly just fine, and circled the area twice before disappearing up the line of the old river channel, to the north:
