....bobo ....

if you look up bobo in a spanish english dictionary, this is what you get:

Bobo, -A

adjective

1. stupid, daft (tonto)

2. naive, simple (ingenuo)

masculine or feminine noun

3. fool, idiot (tonto)

4. simpleton (ingenuo)

Bobo [bo’-bo, bah]

noun

1. Dunce, dolt, fool, mooncalf, silly, stupid; (Theat.) clown, funny man. (m)

• A los bobos se les aparece la madre de Dios -> fortune favors fools
• Entre bobos anda el juego -> they are well matched

2. One who is easily cheated. (m)

3. Sort of ruff formerly worn by women. (m)

4. Stage buffoon. (m)

5. Booby. (Ornate) (n)

• A bobas -> foolishly

  

when darwin was in the galapagos, he met what he thought might be the dumbest birds ever ... and in spanish they were named bobos ... clowns, buffoons, idiots .... and the translation was booby .... in those days, you could just walk up to a booby, pick it up, and toss it aside ..... it put up no fuss or fight or bother ... they were dumb even when being accosted by humans ...

nowadays, no touching!! like all animal life in the galapagos, they are well protected and human nuisance is kept to a minimum ... we were certainly close enough to them that if we had wanted to pick them up, we could have ... not sure what the reaction of the bird would have been, but they were that close to us ...

we went to bartholome on monday, and on the way saw a nesting sight for masked boobies, but on tuesday, on our panga from the boat to shore, we saw blue footed boobies in the rocks ...LOOK!! blue feet!! it was astonishing to see ... and little did we know just how much more we would see of the species ... they are delightful!!! (delightful is such an underutilized word!!)

so on north seymour, we saw blue footed boobies over and over and over again .... they have blue, blue, blue feet ... the bluer the feet, the more desirable they are to the opposite sex ... we literally saw dozens of them, some doing mating dances, some nesting, some standing right on our narrow path, making it impossible to follow the galapagos rules to ALWAYS stay on the path and NEVER go within two meters of an animal ....

before our trip, my mom said to all of us, i need a picture of a blue footed booby ... she told each of us to take one for her ... i think we each thought that it was our job, not knowing we'd all been assigned the task ... so the first 20 or so pics we took of the blue footed boobies, everyone said, that one is for grandma, this picture is for grandma, i just took a great picture for grandma .... i now have 387 pictures of blue footed boobies ... (kidding, i didn't actually count .... ) ....

tomorrow ... let me tell you about the blue footed mating dance ....