On May 11, 1832, John James Audubon was aboard Marion when she sailed about eight miles northeast of the lighthouse at Dry Tortugas to another key called Booby Island. The key was about an acre in size, “the odour of which extended to a considerable distance leeward.” The source of the odor was a bird that would alight on ships that the Spanish sailed while pillaging and plundering their way through the Caribbean and South America. If needed, the birds were shot so easily for food that they were called “bobo,” a Spanish term for a fool or stupidity. English sailors and speakers only made matters worse by translating “bobo” into “booby.”
Audubon bemoaned a booby, or any bird, being compared in any way to a fool or stupidity. “My opinion, founded on pretty extensive observation, is that it is only when birds of any species are unacquainted with man, that they manifest that kind of ignorance or innocence which he calls stupidity, and by which they suffer themselves to be imposed upon. A little acquaintance with him soon enables them to perceive enough of his character to induce them to keep aloof.”
The Booby Gannet is now even more ridiculously known as the Brown booby. And the key that was named Booby Island and was covered with Brown boobies disappeared under water in 1875. The Brown booby now nests mostly with the Sooty terns (Plate 235) on nearby Bush Key. No more than 200 Brown boobies have been counted at Dry Tortugas according to Cornell’s e-Bird system (see eBird Checklist S9341801).