Twitching by pedalo

Red-footed Booby at Lac de Sainte-Croix

The Red-footed Booby was a shimmering white haze in the middle of the lake, and then a small boat sailed past it at point blank range. So we hastily got our gear, parted with a bit of cash and had our own boat charter (well, pedalo but this doesn't sound as impressive).

Charter boat station

Arriving at the bird, it was immediately obvious that it wasn't bothered by us, and continued to sit rather forlornly on the lake. Then, after half an hour or so it decided to have a fly about - skirting the sparse vegetation on the lake shore, presumably wishing it were the rainforest shores of the Caribbean.

Red-footed Booby at Lac de Sainte-Croix

For much of the afternoon, the bird stood and preened on a rock exhibiting its red feet and its small size was really apparent here. Additionally, it once again showed rather well and I imagine that these views would have been stamped on immediately back in the UK, with the Birdforum banter going into overdrive.

JJ and the RFB

Admittedly, when the bird was trapped and ringed, it was surprising that it was not taken into care although it was a very healthy weight. Of course, these boobies love a bit of attention in their native land so perhaps its confiding nature shouldn't be deemed a trait of ill health. But, whatever its physical state, it sure is a crazy bird to have turned up on a lake in France thousands of km from where it should be...

Lavender fields of Provence in the evening light

The Booby Prize

Red-footed Booby, Lac de Sainte-Croix, Alpes de haute, France

Superlatives in birding, like in most other things, are used too much. Everything is either unprecedented or amazing. But I'm going to use both of these words to describe the Red-footed Booby that is currently residing in southern France - well inland at Lac de Sainte-Croixe. And what's more, to get the best views of the bird it's a twitch by pedalo across this picturesque spot.

With its closest open ocean breeding colonies being in either the Caribbean or Indian Ocean, this amazingly showy Red-footed Booby is a truly unprecedented record. Well, it's not really that unprecedented as seabird records never cease to amaze - look at the Yellow-nosed Albatross sat next to a Greylag on a small pond in Lincolnshire, a Long-billed Murrelet drowned in a fishing net on Lake Zurich (plus of course the Devon bird and one in Romania too) and a Soft-plumaged Petrel in Arctic Norway to name just a few in recent years.

Good times in Devon, November 2006