14 October 2018 - Chasing a Booby

Oh boy! What do you do when you hear that a really rare bird--so rare it is the first ever sighting of this bird in Utah--has shown up?  You go chase it!

Someone discovered a Blue-footed Booby on Lake Powell. This is a subtropical bird and over half of the entire population breeds on the Galapagos Islands. What this juvenile bird was doing here is a mystery.  

Four of us decided we must see this bird. We made plans to go down. The first day we drove down to Kanab. That is about a five hour twenty minute drive. It took us a lot longer. Shortly after we hit the road a sinkhole opened up on I-15 causing massive delays as six lanes of freeway were funneled down to a single lane. Of course, this was during rush hour. It took almost two hours to get through this mess. 

It rained on us off and on all the way to Kanab, but it resulted in some fabulous rainbows and a gorgeous sunset. We had a double rainbow that was a complete arch from end to end. All were too large to fit in one camera view. 

We spent the night in Kanab, then drove to Antelope Point Marina outside of Page, Arizona where we rented a boat. The booby had been hanging out in the middle of the lake on a floating dump station dock.  We got rained on the entire four mile boat trip up to the dock.  But that didn't matter a bit when we found the booby preening on the dock. 

We tried easing our way as close as we could without spooking him, while taking as many photos as possible. 

Just as we were reaching a great photo range a speed boat with shrieking people and loud music pulled up to the dock and scared him off. As they piled out of the boat onto the dock they noticed the bird as it was flying away. One of the guys said to us, "Did you see that weird looking bird?" 

Nevertheless, we had a wonderful time, saw a most unexpected bird. And the scenery is stunning.