Buffalo’s Brown Booby bird

There hasn’t been this much excitement off the shore of Fort Erie in years. As Lauran Sabourin reports, there was no threat of a mass invasion this time, just the sighting of a rare brown booby.

They lined the shoreline just across the from the old fort, high-powered binoculars trained on a Buffalo breakwall.

“As the Cormorants move around. He’s probably lying behind some Cormorants. He’s so small.

Birders from all over Ontario have come here. And this is what they’re looking for. It’s called the “Brown Booby.” An odd looking bird with a long beak and turquoise-coloured feet.

They waited for hours. And then all of a sudden, somebody spotted it.

Ellen Smout, a birder from London, Ontario had never seen one before until now: “Come and look in this one. Come and look in this one. It’s really weird to see. It’s in the middle of the Cormorant. Just stood up. Really hard to see. Because it blends with the rocks.”

For many of these birders this is an event of a lifetime. Spotting a bird that would normally not be seen north of Miami. How rare is this?: “This is the first Ontario record. Third Canadian record for the bird.”

The big question is, why did a Brown Booby fly to Buffalo. Speculation is it got carried away on the winds, or simply made a wrong turn.