A Brown Booby Spotted in St Ives Bay

A stunning morning for the ocean ski club paddle was made even more interesting by the discovery that a Brown Booby has been spotted in St Ives Bay!

Yes, you are reading that correctly, and as much as you want to finish the sentence off with a chortle chortle – it is actually a thing, and as it goes, a pretty rare thing in British waters. As part of our love of the ocean and what we do here at the Centre, the wildlife around us is really important and it is always great to hear about interesting birds.

Now I must warn you before you head off to Google Brown Booby – be prepared! And typing birds in the search isn’t going to help you too much either! Ornithology is a pretty good word to use but if you are like me you will need to spell check it. However, in the interests of speed and getting you to the point, at the end of this article there is a list of some useful links I prepared earlier – like all good Blue Peter presenters…

So back to the Brown Booby. As far as I know it is part of the Booby family and is like a large Gannet. It is ingenious to the Tropical regions of the world, our closest major population being found in Cape Verde. So as you can imagine it is pretty rare for us to get one so far off course, but we have and it has been spotted flying around St Ives Bay over the last few days. Distinctive due to it’s contrasting white under belly as well as dwarfing almost every other bird in sight. This information is thanks to a chap in the carpark (I didn’t get his name) who had been there since 6am and had actually managed to spot the bird. We arrived at 6.45am for the Thursday morning ocean ski club session and had an unexpected lesson in birds!

This time of year is great down here at Carbis Bay. The skies and the ocean are full of life, stopping off on their way through to warmer climes. We love the shoulder seasons, there’s change in the air and with it a world of possibilities, it’s a perfect time to get on board one of our Out-Rigger tours, grab the binoculars and bathoscope and get out there and see the world up close.