Photo: Benjamint444 (GFDL 1.2) via Wikimedia Commons

Nazca booby

The Nazca booby is the big, white, unbothered one with the orange bill, and Galápagos holds the largest breeding colonies of the species in the world. It is also the booby with the darkest family life: two eggs, one survivor, by design. Here is where to see them and what is actually going on in those colonies.

Where to see them

Genovesa and Española carry the headline colonies. Floreana and Punta Pitt on San Cristóbal also hold nesting birds. Around 20,000 breeding pairs live in the archipelago, and the species is listed as of Least Concern (IUCN 2021) with a global population in decline. The only other booby comparison you need: the blue-footed booby dances for attention while the Nazca barely acknowledges you.

The staggered calendar

Nazca boobies stagger their breeding season by island. Española nests from November to February, Genovesa from August to November. That is convenient for planning, because an Española itinerary in the warm season and a Genovesa itinerary in the dry season both land you in an active colony with eggs or chicks. In February the Española season winds down; in August it is in full swing on Genovesa.

Two eggs, one chick

The female always lays two eggs, laid up to nine days apart, and this is not redundancy but a system. The first chick hatches about five days before its sibling and almost always kills the second chick, especially in years when food is scarce. The second egg exists as insurance against the 25 to 50 percent of first eggs that fail. Guides explain it flatly, visitors flinch, and the colony carries on.

Egg failure is common even by booby standards, and in El Niño years Nazca boobies may skip breeding altogether.

Courtship and nests

The display is a parade: pairs face each other and tip their beaks to the sky, the classic sky-pointing dance. The nest is an afterthought, a scrape in the ground ringed with a few pebbles and lined with the birds’ own guano, usually on cliff tops.

In the air

Nazcas plunge-dive from up to 30 meters for sardines, flying fish, anchovies and squid. They live 20 to 25 years. One caution from the sea: they are frequent victims of fishing gear outside the reserve, which is the main pressure on the species.

Sibling rivalry, in context

Siblicide sounds like a horror story until you see the logic: in a bad year, the second chick is food the parents cannot provide anyway, so the species wastes nothing. The masked booby, the Nazca’s sister species, was only split off as its own species in 2002, which is why older books call it a masked booby.

Both of its booby cousins have their own pages: the tree-nesting red-footed booby and the blue-footed showman. Our Galápagos birds guide links every species page, and the wildlife calendar shows which colonies are active in your month.

Last verified: September 2026