Birds of Costa Rica


Cocos Booby (Sula brewsteri) Male Puerto Angel, Oaxaca, Mexico
Photograph by Tropical Birding (Nick Athanas) © All Rights Reserved.

A new species split from the Brown Booby, and found on islands off of California and Baja California, and sometimes as far south as Colombia. Note white head and a pale brown upper neck. There is overlap between the two species.


Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra) Hawaii, United States Photo credit: C. Eggleston/USFWS.
Photograph by U.S. Government employee (see below) Copyright and usage info This image is a work of a National Science Foundation employee, taken or made during the course of the person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.


Nazca Booby (Sula granti) Bahia Solano, Choco, Colombia Note bill color different from Masked Booby.
Photograph by Tom Friedel © All Rights Reserved.


Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster) Playa la Agua, Isla Margarita, Venezuela
Photograph by Tom Friedel © All Rights Reserved.


Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii excisa) Galapagos Islands, Ecuador Nests on the Galapagos Islands.
Photograph by Steven Bedard Copyright and usage info This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported. In short: you are free to share the file for commercial or non-commercial purposes under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.


Red-footed Booby (Sula sula) Galapagos, Ecuador
Photograph by Charles J. Sharp/Sharp Photography Copyright and usage info This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 License. You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work under the following conditions: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.


Red-footed Booby (Sula sula rubripes) Christmas Island
Photograph by Patrick Kavanagh Copyright and usage info This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file for non-commercial purposes under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.

This species can be brown, brown with a white tail, or white with black wings.