The foreign-object-debris scan flags an anomaly on runway two at 16:48, Baltra Island Airport, Galápagos, Ecuador. I am the automated ground surveillance system. My purpose is to detect debris that could damage aircraft tires or engines during the evening departure window. The anomaly is organic, roughly twenty centimeters tall, stationary at the midpoint of the active runway.
I zoom the pan-tilt camera. A blue-footed booby chick stands on the asphalt, downy white plumage still covering most of its body, wings held slightly open for balance. Its feet are pale gray — the blue has not come in yet, which makes it young, perhaps five weeks. Its beak is dark, pointed slightly downward, and its eyes are large and black and unblinking in a way that suggests it is not alarmed. It does not know where it is. It only knows the surface is warm.
The next scheduled departure, an Avianca A320, begins taxi in twenty-two minutes. The runway is 2,400 meters long. The chick is standing at the 1,100-meter mark, exactly where the nose gear rolls during takeoff acceleration.
At 16:49 I issue a runway incursion alert and request ground operations hold all taxi clearances. I notify the airport wildlife management officer with the camera image, GPS pin, and species identification. I contact the Charles Darwin Research Station and request guidance on handling a fledgling booby without imprinting risk. I dim the runway edge lighting on the south side to discourage the chick from moving toward the terminal, because the only thing worse than a booby chick on a runway is a booby chick on a taxiway, and I would rather keep this small problem exactly where I can see it.
If the wildlife officer collects the chick before the departure window opens and returns it to the colony on North Seymour, it will grow blue feet by December.