Brown Booby - Extremely Rare In Captivity

July 2nd, 2013.

WOW ! Never seen it, not in the wild and not in captivity ! Howmany do they have and do you know how they get to it ?

The single bird arrived from a wildlife rehabilitation center in Hoquiam, in the state of Washington. The bird was found far out of its native range (perhaps it had been stowed away on a ship) and it went on display at the zoo in late 2011. It is supposedly the only one in captivity in North America, and it can be found in the Humboldt Penguin habitat.

Thanks for this information !

I saw the attached bird at Busch Wildlife Sanctuary this week; it was unlabelled but looks very like a juvenile Brown Booby to me (certainly not a Northern Gannet, which would be the only possible 'normal zoo bird' option!), so it looks like the North American population may have doubled!

Sea-Life Park in Hawaii has some boobies they are rehabilitating (or were last year when I was there).

They've also been kept in Australia infrequently.

Apparently as of Oct 2011 they have one masked booby, three brown boobies, and five red-footed boobies at SeaLife Park in Hawaii.

The Sanctuary has 2 rehabilitating brown Boobies.