A tropical bird with colorful feet landed on a Maryland bay — and no local birder had ever seen one there
It was an ordinary summer day on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay — until it wasn’t. Boaters and birders near Thomas Point Park in Anne Arundel County found themselves staring at a bird with strikingly colorful feet, hopping cheerfully from boat to boat as if it had every right to be there.
It didn’t. The red-footed booby belongs in the tropics, thousands of miles away. And yet, there it was — only the second of its kind ever officially recorded in the state.
A bird that had no business being there
The red-footed booby (Sula sula) isn’t a bird you’d expect drifting through the mid-Atlantic. Its range stretches across the Pacific and curves east toward the Caribbean and West Indies — warm, tropical waters far removed from Maryland’s shores. A Chesapeake sighting isn’t just unusual. It’s the kind of event that makes experienced birders stop and double-check what they’re looking at.
Field biologist Steve Sheffield, president of the Maryland Ornithological Society, confirmed this was only the second red-footed booby ever officially recorded in the state. “The range for the red-footeds is extensive,” Sheffield told Popular Science. “It goes all the way out into the Pacific Ocean, and in the east, it goes to the West Indies, Caribbean. It’s more of a Pacific bird, but extremely rare here.”
What made the sighting even more striking was the bird’s demeanor — it wasn’t panicked or disoriented. It hopped between boats, rested along the shoreline, and seemed entirely unbothered by the humans gawking at it. Red-footed boobies are naturally prone to wandering, Sheffield notes. They spend long stretches at sea and aren’t strangers to straying far from familiar territory.
Storms, warm water, and a long way from home
So how does a tropical seabird end up in the Chesapeake Bay? Sheffield’s best guess points to a tropical storm. “I think it was off course, so there was probably some kind of a tropical storm that knocked it off course and up here,” he said. “That’s not that big of a deal because they can change their course easily.”
The booby’s natural wandering tendencies make it more susceptible to weather-driven displacement than many other species. A strong storm system pushing northward can carry a bird hundreds of miles before conditions settle — and for a species already comfortable spending weeks over open ocean, the Chesapeake may have simply looked like the next reasonable place to rest.
Individual storms don’t fully explain the trend, though. Increasingly abnormal weather patterns and warming ocean temperatures are making out-of-range sightings more frequent across the board. Maryland recorded its first red-footed booby only in 2024. A year later, another one appeared. That’s not coincidence — it’s a signal worth paying attention to.
The booby wasn’t alone: a relative followed close behind
The red-footed booby’s visit would have been enough to make any birder’s summer. But July brought another surprise: a brown booby (Sula leucogaster) was also spotted in the Chesapeake, visiting boats and perching on buoys.
Brown boobies are slightly more common than their red-footed relatives, but they’re still a genuinely rare find for mid-Atlantic birders. The regional birding community wasted no time. “The birders in this area were trying to find any boat owner that would take them out,” Sheffield said, laughing.
Two tropical seabirds in a single summer season is the kind of thing that gets people talking. Each sighting on its own could be written off as a fluke — together, they’re harder to dismiss. When even a small pattern starts to emerge, scientists and enthusiasts alike tend to pay closer attention.
Tropical species are quietly rewriting Maryland’s wildlife map
The boobies aren’t the only tropical visitors making themselves at home in unexpected places. Climate-driven range shifts are quietly reshaping what counts as “local wildlife” across the mid-Atlantic.
Anhingas (Anhinga anhinga), a species typically associated with Texas and the Deep South, are now breeding in Maryland for the first time. Brown pelicans are moving steadily up the Atlantic coast. Even some southern bat species are extending their ranges northward, following the warmth. The arrivals span multiple taxonomic groups, which makes the pattern harder to attribute to any single cause.
Sheffield acknowledges that scientists are still working to understand what these shifts mean in practice. New species arriving can alter food webs, compete with established residents, or fill niches that didn’t previously exist — and ecosystems are changing in ways that aren’t yet fully mapped. The science is still catching up to what’s happening on the ground, and in the water.
What’s clear is that the definition of “native” or “local” is becoming harder to pin down. The wildlife map of the mid-Atlantic is being redrawn, slowly but unmistakably.
Fleeting visitors, lasting questions
Neither booby stuck around. Both moved on after brief stays, leaving behind photos, field notes, and a lot of excited chatter among birders. Maryland isn’t about to become tropical seabird habitat anytime soon.
For Sheffield, moments like these are part of what makes field biology rewarding. “One of the things that’s great about being a field biologist is you never know what you’re going to see,” he said. “It’s like Christmas every day.”
That sense of surprise carries a more serious undercurrent. The unpredictability that thrills birders also reflects genuine ecological disruption — and when tropical birds start appearing in places they’ve never been recorded, it’s worth asking what else is shifting, and how quickly.
The Chesapeake Bay didn’t change overnight. But the creatures showing up on its waters are telling a story about a world quietly rearranging itself, one unexpected visitor at a time.
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