They sit together as a flock in the ocean, white boobies, brown boobies, mixed boobies. They fly up together to prey on flying fish. Our boat does scare off the flying fish, so the fish fly away from the boat, usually, some take a wrong turn and land on deck.
Boobies are good fliers and rapidly change direction and speed to catch the flying fish during its short duration flight. Once a boobie has caught a fish, the others will attack the first to make it lose the fish... Some birds look rather roughed up, missing tail feathers, sometimes all of them, or missing feathers in the wings.
They not only fight over food, but also for a perch on the boat. Every evening a flock of boobies will circle the boat, for hours. Sometimes one manages to land on the pulpit, or like last night, on top of the mast. Off course the other ~20 boobies want that same spot and will fly attacks against the sitting bird. The sitting bird has an advantage: the boat is rocking, and with it the mast, so sometimes the attacking boobie is surprised by the moving mast almost hitting the attacker. We have had boobies fly into the jib... There are many more spots for the birds to land on our boat, but whatever the first bird has chosen, seems to be the only place to go for that night.
Eating fish all day, makes for great poop, which they expel mid flight with force, then wiggle the tail almost missing to flap the wings, it looks funny until said poop ends up on the boat. Splatter… The rain in the doldrums will be welcome to wash that shit off.
