Brown Booby  Sula leucogaster

Texas Coastal / Offshore Status: Uncommon visitor to offshore waters and along the coast and accidental inland. There were 87 documented records (72 of those in coastal / offshore areas) up until to 2017 when this species was removed from the Review List.  Brown Booby has increased dramatically in abundance in the past 6-8 years.

Habitat: along the immediate coast, and offshore. This species has been found perched on rock jetties, channel markers, and on spoil islands; may occur on occasion in offshore and pelagic waters off the Texas Coast.

Similar Species: Brown Booby can be distinguished from both Northern Gannet and Masked Booby by its browner plumage (dark brown breast and all dark back and rump) and yellow feet. Both Northern Gannet and Masked Booby show variable amounts of white in rump or uppertail coverts. Masked Booby always shows white breast.

(1) TOS Handbook of Texas Birds; by Mark W. Lockwood and Brush Freeman (2005)
(2) Lower Texas Coast Status from Brad McKinney’s annotated checklist (updated 2009).

Seasonal Occurrence Graph

Texas Pelagics Sightings Distribution 

Map 1) The above live Google map shows the geographic distribution of Brown Booby found in Offshore Texas from lat-long data I’ve captured from 35 years of Texas Pelagics. No longer a TBRC review species due to rapidly increasing numbers in Texas.
Click on the box in the upper left of the map to view the map legend.
Click on each sighting symbol and the data label will appear showing the time, date and the number of birds seen.
Click on the symbol on the top right of the map to view a larger map.

The next two map images are copied from eBird.

Map 2) This map is zoomed into Texas and Louisiana to show individual locations.

Map 3) The bottom map is zoomed out to show the GOM, the northern Caribbean Sea and the adjacent western tropical Atlantic ocean. 

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