Red-footed Booby, Saudi Arabia (1 Viewer)

[opisska]

Farasan ferry today afternoon sailing, quite close to Farasan end.

Considering that there are ZERO records on eBird and neither does the Birds of Middle East book mention it for KSA, it's a shame that the documentation is so bad, courtesy of the stupid ferry that doesn't allow outside access, its stupid dirty windows and even stupider gender segregation that meant that we had to be at different parts of the ship if we wanted at least some views.

But hear me out, this Booby has red legs. There is not a lot of legs on my wife's pictures but there are definitely some! On my pictures, the bird was closer but did not show the legs ...

If anyone has any idea what else could it be, please say so! If anyone knows if there are any previous KSA records, we'd be also very interested to know!

 

[njlarsen]

I would consider the bluish-pink color of the bill visible in some of the images as supportive of your id.
Niels

 

[THE_FERN]

Looks like to me

 

[Butty]

The belly presumably doesn't actually have substantial reddish on it, even though the photos appear to show that it has - so it's not safe to assume that the (immediately-adjacent) legs are actually reddish either.

 

[nartreb]

The belly presumably doesn't actually have substantial reddish on it, even though the photos appear to show that it has - so it's not safe to assume that the (immediately-adjacent) legs are actually reddish either.

The buoy and the bird's belly are both white. A phantom pinkish tinge on the belly is an entirely natural lighting effect due to red light scattering off the feet.
You can see it faintly in the largest photo here: Red-footed Booby Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology And the top photo here: Red-footed booby - Wikipedia

 

[Mike Earp]

Considering that there are ZERO records on eBird and neither does the Birds of Middle East book mention it for KSA, it's a shame that the documentation is so bad ...

If anyone has any idea what else could it be, please say so! If anyone knows if there are any previous KSA records, we'd be also very interested to know!

Red-footed Booby is listed as Rare/Accidental by Avibase.

 

[tconzemi]

The belly presumably doesn't actually have substantial reddish on it, even though the photos appear to show that it has - so it's not safe to assume that the (immediately-adjacent) legs are actually reddish either.

I don't know anything about boobies but quite a lot about photo artefacts, and these legs are red(dish)

 

[Larry Sweetland]

Nice one Jan 👍

 

[THE_FERN]

The belly presumably doesn't actually have substantial reddish on it, even though the photos appear to show that it has - so it's not safe to assume that the (immediately-adjacent) legs are actually reddish either.

Fab ! ...The reddish belly is actually red light from the feet reflecting off the otherwise white surfaces all around (bird, buoy etc). Bill confirms id...

 

[Butty]

The reddish belly is actually red light from the feet

Wow 🤣

 

[MJB]

Farasan ferry today afternoon sailing, quite close to Farasan end.

Considering that there are ZERO records on eBird and neither does the Birds of Middle East book mention it for KSA, it's a shame that the documentation is so bad, courtesy of the stupid ferry that doesn't allow outside access, its stupid dirty windows and even stupider gender segregation that meant that we had to be at different parts of the ship if we wanted at least some views.

But hear me out, this Booby has red legs. There is not a lot of legs on my wife's pictures but there are definitely some! On my pictures, the bird was closer but did not show the legs ...

If anyone has any idea what else could it be, please say so! If anyone knows if there are any previous KSA records, we'd be also very interested to know!

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The nearest record of Red-footed Booby I can find listed is for 1985 off Djibouti, some 525km further south than the Farasans, but none for the Red Sea itself. There are around 10 records for the Arabian/Persian Gulf, mostly off UAE, Oman and Iran. It has been sporadically recorded off the south Arabian coast, but not regularly in the western Indian Ocean until below 10 degrees south. The islands in the southern Red Sea have received little or no regular ornithological coverage, just sporadic visits, a very few of which describable as surveys, and so Red-footed Booby, though a vagrant, might perhaps be an odds-on expected vagrant. Brown Booby is a regular Red Sea breeding bird, although its population is diminishing in the northern part..

I've seen Brown Booby side by side with Red-footed Booby looking rather like the two in your photo, but that was in the South Atlantic on Boatswain Bird Island, just off the SE corner of Ascension Island.
MJB